LOCH SHELDRAKE – Thanks to an appropriation by the Sullivan County Legislature, SUNY Sullivan is offering a new tuition-free scholarship program.
The Sullivan Promise Scholarship will cover the cost of tuition and fees for 2022 high school graduates for one year of full-time study in a degree program at the community college.
College President Jay Quaintance said a college degree can open new doors to careers and higher earnings.
“Typically if a person graduates from college after completing high school they earn up to one-third more over their lifetime, they have reduced incidences of cancer, obesity, substance abuse disorders; there is just a whole range of reasons and then there is looming problem of continued student loan debt just weighing down generation after generation of people,” he said.
The scholarship program will cover the full tuition and fees of county residents who graduated from high school this year, including GED students and homeschoolers, who are admitted to the college beginning this coming fall. There is a two-year residency requirement and recipients must maintain a minimum 2.5 grade point average.
County Legislature Chairman Rob Doherty said the program is “not a giveaway – it’s a promise “that they can begin forging their professional lives right here in Sullivan County. And, it holds the promise of retaining our young people into adulthood, into leadership, into volunteerism, into raising the next generation with the hope we gave them. It’s the promise of the future.”
