The HOPE lottery scholarship provides  $2650 per year to qualified students – but the average college tuition increase since the Fall 2001 semester has been $2298 in South Carolina.  That means the HOPE lottery scholarship is worth only $352 since the Legislature stopped full funding for colleges.  The Legislature is using the lottery money to pay for stuff that should be in the regular budget -- at the cost of making a college education unaffordable for families in South Carolina.  [September 19, 2004]

In South Carolina, the "education lottery" is anything but.  During its first three years, only four cents of every dollar has gone to K-12 public schools -- although the public schools have lost more than $372 million dollars to budget cuts over that same period of time.  [February 29, 2004]

The owners of convenience stores and gas stations around the state are getting twice as much money ($60.8 million – 7%) from “The South Carolina Education Lottery” as are the K-12 public schools ($32.9 million – 3.8%).  A name change seems to be in order.  But, in South Carolina, you can't gamble unless you do it for charity or the children -- so we have bingo and the "education lottery." [January 15, 2003]