The Regents High Honors Endorsement Scholarship, also known as the AIMS scholarship, will not be discontinued at Arizona’s universities — at least for now.

The Arizona Board of Regents voted unanimously on Friday to reaffirm its commitment to the scholarship, which covers the cost of tuition at any Arizona university for all qualified in-state high-school graduates.

But regents made sure the vote did not keep them from reconsidering the scholarship at any point in the future.

“I’m not guaranteeing it forever,” said Regent Dennis DeConcini, who proposed the action. “I understand the commitment … [but] this is a different game.”

The financial situation is too uncertain right now to say whether the universities will always be able to fund the scholarship, he said, though he thinks they can support it at this time.

Earlier this year, ASU officials asked the regents to suspend the scholarship for freshmen entering in fall 2010 as a way to deal with significant budget cuts expected for next year. UA officials later supported this request.

Both universities planned to continue funding all previously awarded AIMS scholarships, as well as those awarded to incoming freshmen in fall 2009.

Statewide, more than 5,500 students received the scholarship this school year, at a cost of $27.6 million to the university system.

President Michael Crow told regents that the University already directs a large amount of money to financial aid and could be forced to cut some merit-based aid programs to support the AIMS scholarship.

“We will still make reductions in merit-based aid,” he said. “We have no choice.”

Money to fund the AIMS scholarship would likely come from
other merit-based scholarships, he said, so a vote either way could result in fewer financial-aid opportunities.

He said he recommended the board remove the AIMS scholarship, because students who receive it are not typically as high of performers as those who receive other merit-based aid.

NAU President John Haeger, however, said there may be other benefits to the scholarship that haven’t been recognized since it began in 2006. For that reason, he said the board should see if other benefits arise, like a higher retention rate or higher GPAs among university students.

“In fact, what we [may] have done is created a group of students who’ve created the appropriate study skills needed to stay in college,” Haeger said. “I think it’s a wait-and-see [situation].”

State Superintendent Tom Horne, a member of the board of regents, said the AIMS scholarship has clear guidelines that many students work toward in high school and depend on to go to college.

“This is a scholarship where everybody knows exactly what is expected if they meet those predetermined objectives,” he said. “It motivates them to study harder.”

Regent Fred DuVal said he felt bound to ABOR’s commitment to the scholarship, but changing times means the board will have to act on other tough decisions in the future.

“I think we owe it to our stakeholders to be clear that if we avoid this difficult choice, we are forcing other difficult choices,” he said. Those could include tuition increases, financial-aid reductions and compromises to other commitments to students and faculty, DuVal said.

“We’ve made a lot of aspirational commitments because that’s the business we were in six months ago,” he said. “[Now] it is a different world. ... We can’t honor all of the commitments we’ve made.”

If all commitments cannot be honored in the future, DuVal said the board should not continue to make more guarantees, which is why he supported the idea that the board continue the AIMS scholarship but not restrict its options in the future.

“We simply cannot continue to tie our hands,” he said. “We have to make choices as they come.”

Reach the reporter at adam.sneed@asu.edu.