Some of Georgia’s top scholars learned they will no longer be able to receive scholarship money.

This month, eligible University students were told by the Office of Financial Aid that the Governor’s Scholarship will no longer exist. The scholarship recognized Georgia students who were the valedictorian or the STAR student of their graduating high school class and attended a postsecondary school in Georgia.

For this past school year, 429 University students were recipients of the Governor’s Scholarship. Roughly a quarter of them will graduate in May, said Nancy Ferguson, the University’s financial aid adviser in the Office of Student Financial Aid, in an e-mail response. The maximum amount students can receive each year is $900.

The termination of the state-funded scholarship was due to the economic downturn, decrease in state revenue and $2 million budget deficit the state was facing, Chris Schrimpf, Gov. Sonny Perdue’s press secretary, said in a phone interview Friday.

The HOPE Scholarship also played a role in the state’s decision to cancel the Governor’s Scholarship. To maintain the Governor’s Scholarship, a student needed a 3.0 GPA after the 30 hour, 60 hour and 90 hour marks.

“The scholarship was created before the HOPE,” Schrimpf said, “and students who received the Governor’s also had HOPE. Since maintaining the HOPE is a strong commitment of the state’s, other steps were taken to help lessen the weak economy’s impact on Georgians as much as possible.”

Ferguson said the University will not be directly hit, since it received no money from the scholarship. However, indirectly, she said students would be negatively affected.

“Students are a big part of the University,” Ferguson said. “They are losing funds for which they worked very hard. In that respect, it definitely affects the University community.”

Blake Norman, a sophomore from Glennville, did not agree with the state’s decision.

“I understand that the economic circumstances require certain cutbacks, but I feel that funding for education should have been a last resort,” he said. “I expected to receive the … scholarship, but now that it’s been cancelled, I will be forced to make other arrangements.”

Jordan Tompkins, a freshman from Collins, said the e-mail created an unexpected loss in preparing for financial aid for next year.

“It’s frustrating to know that we’ve had to work hard to be awarded this money and to continue to be eligible for this scholarship, but that at any moment we could receive an e-mail that pretty much just says, ‘the funds aren’t there,’” Tompkins said. “When I sat down to add up my scholarship money, to make sure I had enough for the next four years, I didn’t consider that the funds just wouldn’t be there. I depended on that money to help with housing because HOPE doesn’t cover everything.”