Ten years ago, the HOPE Scholarship began with an income cap — and it may soon have another one.

Three new bills proposed by the Georgia State Senate Democrats last week would overhaul HOPE and the Zell Miller Scholarship.

If the bills are passed, HOPE will convert to a need-based program, and the GPA requirements will be eliminated.  Only students whose families make less than $140,000 a year will be eligible to receive HOPE awards — akin to the $66,000 income cap HOPE started out with in 1993.

Students protested at the Arch last year after HOPE underwent dramatic changes. This year, the program may once again have new rules. File/The Red & Black

Sean Hicks, a sophomore economics, international affairs and history major from Roswell, said he is not sure whether or not the income cap will affect him, but thinks it will make affording college more difficult for students above the cap.

Senator Emanuel Jones, who helped sponsor the bills, said they will go to the Higher Education Committee for voting sometime within the next week, although he was unable to provide the exact date. If passed, the changes will take effect at the beginning of the 2012-13 academic year.

According to the proposed amendment, one bill will “eliminate the minimum grade point average requirement for maintaining eligibility for a HOPE grant.”

Senator Steve Henson, also a sponsor of the bills, said HOPE would continue to be partially merit-based, requiring students to maintain a 3.0 average.

Henson said the income cap is a necessary step in order to continue providing students with some form of the HOPE Scholarship.

“We have to pick one of two options: either decrease the amount HOPE recipients get or make it means tested so some people will still get 100 percent of their tuition covered,” Henson said. “As it stands, by 2016 it will pay less than half of a college education.”

In its first year, HOPE awards amounted to $21.4 million. The amount of money students received from HOPE increased each year, reaching $748.1 million in 2010, according to the Georgia Student Finance Commission’s website.

Program funding has been unable to keep up with the increases in tuition and the growing number of students receiving aid, Henson said.

Hicks said he thinks if these bills are passed, fewer students might decide to go to school in Georgia.

“The original point of HOPE was to keep students in the top percentage of their classes in Georgia,” Hicks said.

The bills will also change the Zell Miller Scholarship qualifications, making the award available to the top 3 percent of students in their high school’s graduating class. Zell Miller is only awarded to students with both a 3.7 GPA and 1200 SAT score.

Jones said he does not believe the current qualifiers are the best indicator of success in college, and the changes will give students throughout Georgia an equal opportunity to receive the scholarship.

“Kids from the rural and urban areas don’t have the resources to do as well,” Jones said. “That’s why I support the top 3 percent.”

Henson said the current requirements have created an unfair distribution of award recipients within the state.

“Right now the Zell Miller Scholarship is overwhelmingly white and much more metro-based,” Henson said. “It’s not geographically spread out in the state, and it’s concentrated very heavily in certain areas.”

Jones said he supported similar changes last year, but the proposals were turned down by the Senate.

“I think the government is open to different suggestions on how to help these programs now,” Jones said.