Date of Award

6-2-2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

John Kuykendall

Abstract

In 2010, Arkansas became the most recent state to establish a state lottery program, which allowed lottery revenue to serve as the primary funding source for the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship. The primary goal of this research study was to begin understanding the type of impact the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship funded by the Arkansas Lottery had on the college persistence and graduation rates of first-time, full-time recipients attending a public four-year Arkansas institution. A quasi-experimental longitudinal research design was used, and the theoretical framework Human Capital Theory guided the study. The research study was focused on analyzing scholarship recipients and non-recipients to determine statistically significant relationships between variables, and better understand who the scholarship was primarily benefitting. Seven research questions guided the study focused on the following areas: (1) demographic characteristics of scholarship recipients, (2) what factors contributed to the graduation rates of scholarship recipients, (3) characteristic differences between completers and late completers, (4) college persistence and graduation rates of recipients who lost the scholarship after the first-year, (5) college persistence and graduation rate differences between recipients and non-recipients, (6) were all Arkansas counties equally impacted by the scholarship, and (7) what impact did the scholarship have on scholarship recipients. The research study provides important findings to this topic as there are very few studies focused on the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship funded by the Arkansas Lottery.

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