Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine said “dramatic adjustments” will need to be made next legislative session for the Millennium Scholarship to survive.

The Nevada Governor Guinn Millennium Scholarship, named after Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn who signed it into law in 1999, has been funding Nevada college students for nearly three decades. More than 177,000 students to date have used the scholarship, which is based on test scores and GPAs and offers students $10,000.

But the funding for the award — based on dwindling revenue from the sale of tobacco products — is becoming increasingly unstable as each year goes by. 

“We either need to keep putting in new money [from the] general fund appropriations, or you need to decrease the amount of money the Millennium Scholarship costs,” Conine said. “That’s going to be a legislative decision.” 

According to Conine, the Millennium Scholarship wasn’t looked at this legislative session because during the last session, $75 million from the general fund was allocated to maintain the scholarship for the next four years.

Asked about the scholarship in the final weeks of the recently completed session, Ways and Means Committee Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno (D-North Las Vegas) said, “My focus, and I think everyone's focus, is getting out of this session, making sure we don't have a structural deficit.”

However, by the time 2027 hits, the Millennium Scholarship will not have enough money to cover all eligible students. 

The $10,000 scholarships, split over a four-year period ranging from $960 to $1,200 per semester, are awarded each year to several thousand qualifying Nevada high school graduates who are attending an in-state college or university.

Sen. Fabian Doñate (D-Las Vegas) is among those putting thought into how to fund the program — including floating the idea of opening it up to private contributions. 

“Governor Guinn, while he was on the opposite political side of me, he had this vision that if kids stayed in school and they went through a good education that the state would take care of them as they're going through that journey,” Doñate said. “That's something that all of us should be fighting for, right? Regardless of who we are, where we come from and what our political beliefs are.”

History

The scholarship was signed into law as an incentive for high-achieving students to stay in Nevada for college. A survey of parents taken shortly after the scholarship launched found that 70 percent were using the Millennium Scholarship to encourage their kids to do good in school to receive the scholarship.

Funding comes from a master settlement agreement with the four largest tobacco companies to recover costs from treating smoking-related illnesses. In 1998, the attorneys general of 46 states signed the agreement, with 40 percent of Nevada’s settlement allocated to fund the scholarship. The other 60 percent goes toward funding health care programs in the state. 

Since the settlement was signed, an additional 40 tobacco companies have joined the agreement, which also had a provision for nonparticipating tobacco manufacturers. They are required to deposit funds equivalent to 2 cents per cigarette sold in the state for the past year into an escrow account. 

Conine told The Nevada Independent that when it started, there was enough money to pay for all students who qualified for the scholarship. This isn’t the case anymore. The money from the settlement agreement hasn’t been enough to pay for the Millennium Scholarship since 2006. 

“Since then, more people are going to college. Fewer people are smoking,” Conine said. 

According to the Nevada Tobacco Control Plan, Nevadans who smoke are down by 50 percent over the last 20 years.

There are two additional sources of money helping fund the scholarship. The Millennium Scholarship has been receiving $7.6 million every year since 2006 from the Unclaimed Property Trust Fund.

The other source is general fund appropriations authorized by the Legislature. 

During the last fiscal year, the Millennium Scholarship took in $24 million from multiple sources — $7.6 million from unclaimed property, $14 million from the tobacco revenue interest earnings, and $3 million generated by the Nevada State Treasurer's Office. 

However, the total cost of the Millennium Scholarship was about $37 million, leaving a $13 million deficit that needed to be filled by general fund revenues. Every year, the state sees similar situations play out.

What’s next for the Millennium Scholarship?

According to Conine, there are too many people using the Millennium Scholarship for the money that is “directly available to it.” 

According to Erik Jimenez, chief policy deputy at the Nevada State Treasurer's Office, 15,213 students became eligible for the scholarship in 2024 and 7,000 of those students are using the scholarship.

The scholarship costs between $37 million to $39 million annually. Since the start of the program, the state has spent about $699 million with 74,860 degrees and certificates earned. 

Conine recognizes this is a “significant” political issue that will be sorted out. If it’s decided that the state should spend less on the Millennium Scholarship program, then fewer students will get it. 

Another solution could be to give each student less than $10,000. 

When the scholarship was signed into law, the $10,000 originally allocated covered more than the cost of tuition at UNLV and UNR for four years.

“The goal was to get the best and brightest to stay in the state,” Conine said. “We had great students graduating from Nevada high schools and then going to college in other places.”

This prompted Guinn and the Legislature to create the scholarship, incentivizing students to stay in Nevada if their tuition was covered. Despite its original intent, the Millennium Scholarship no longer covers all of a student’s tuition. 

Undergraduate students at UNR pay roughly $23,000 to $29,000 yearly for tuition, fees, books, a meal plan and housing, and UNLV students pay about $25,000 to $28,000 yearly — meaning the scholarship only covers the equivalent of one semester of total costs. 

Ben Kieckhefer, who worked on Millennium Scholarship policy during his 12 years in the Legislature, said he wonders “when the time is right to sort of reevaluate the program.”

“The purchasing power of the Millennium Scholarship has reduced significantly, obviously, since it was created when it funded 100 percent of tuition,” Kieckhefer said in an interview. “And so I think the question we probably need to ask ourselves is whether we are accomplishing our mission with this scholarship still.”

Costs per credit have quadrupled. In 2003, a credit to attend UNR and UNLV cost $79, meaning tuition without room and board was approximately $2,400 a year. It’s projected in 2027 that a single credit will cost about $316 and students will pay approximately $9,480 yearly excluding room and board. 

“What you don't want to do is incentivize people to go to school by paying a small portion of their tuition,” Kieckhefer said. “Have them take out student loans and then not be successful because they gotta pay those loans back no matter what.”

Kieckhefer said he did not have any specific ideas on how to sustainably fund the scholarship. 

Conine also concludes that since tuition is no longer being fully covered, a slightly less expensive college decision may not keep students in the state anymore. 

Stacy Miller, college and career coordinator at Las Vegas Academy, says she’s been seeing a lot of students going out of state for college. 

“For some of our students, it's not enough to keep them in state,” Miller told The Nevada Independent in an interview. “Especially because some of the out of state schools or the private schools are going to give them much more monetary incentive to go to their schools.”

Possible funding solutions

Over the years, the Millennium Scholarship became slightly harder to receive. Students now need to have a 3.25 GPA coming out of high school, or they have to get a 1070 on the SAT or a 21 on the ACT. When the scholarship was first signed into law, students only needed a 3.0 GPA.

“If we had a magic wand, we would try to return the scholarship to its original purpose, focused on the best and brightest,” said Conine, who argues that would better retain students. “It would get more money to a much smaller group of students.”

However, Maggie Carlton, a former longtime lawmaker and member of the Nevada State Board of Education, disagrees with making the scholarship more difficult to earn because the “best and brightest” will already be receiving scholarships from other universities.

“They’re going to get two or three scholarships, and these other kids aren't going to get any,” Carlton said. “Sometimes they don't do great in high school, but once they hit college, they hit their stride. They find a passion.”

Doñate also disagrees with Conine’s idea to raise eligibility standards to save the Millennium Scholarship. When Doñate was pursuing his master’s degree, he went to the University of Maryland, where he learned of the Maryland Promise Scholarship and how that’s been funded.

“The kids that grew up in the state, if they earned good grades … then we are going to do everything in our power to support those students … regardless of the … socioeconomic background that they're experiencing,” Doñate said. “That's what the Maryland Promise Scholarship does. That's why Maryland ranks as one of the top states in education.”

The Maryland Promise Scholarship is funded through private and public partnerships. Donors can either give their donation up front for the scholarship to use or put it in a bank account and let it generate more money for future generations.

“We should be doing that same model here,” Doñate said. “We should allow private companies to be able to contribute directly to it, while also ensuring that we're also investing in ourselves.”

Doñate also believes that cannabis taxes should have been used to help fund the Millennium Scholarship — but they’re already designated to help K-12 schools. 

When Carlton was first advocating for the Millennium Scholarship to pass through the Legislature in 1999, she said she felt the scholarship should only be available to students entering the medical field. However, she said she’s glad lawmakers made it a universal scholarship for any student to earn.

“Take the literary arts. Do a journalism class. Take history. Just become a more rounded person and just more educated,” Carlton said. “Sometimes that's all they need … It isn't necessarily the degree that matters.” 

Changes

Conine notes that if changes do come to the scholarship, they have to be intentional since families plan around receiving it and Nevadans shouldn’t be surprised if changes arise. 

“Like any other major program, you have to have a period of transition,” Conine said. “If they know that in five years the Millennium Scholarship is only going to support this group of students, they can plan for it.” 

Doñate planned to introduce a bill this session that included making changes to the Millennium Scholarship, but decided to wait until the 2027 legislative session. The intent of his bill would have allowed students who aren’t taking the required 12-15 credits to remain eligible for the scholarship. Currently, students could lose access to the scholarship funds if their course load drops below the required number of credits per semester.

Doñate lost his scholarship because he had to work full time while finishing school, which meant he was only able to take nine to 10 credits per semester instead of 12 to 15.

“I lost eligibility, not because I wasn't graduating on time, not because I didn’t have a good GPA, but because I did not meet the threshold of what they determined to be full time versus part time,” Doñate said. “That was erroneous, and there are other students that fall into that situation, and I think it's a false promise from the state, where we tell them they have earned their spot because of good grades, and we want to keep them here, and then we kick them off the system.”

Despite the funding issues, Doñate and Carlton believe the Millennium Scholarship should continue to be funded without making it harder to receive nor minimizing the amount students get. 

“If we value it, and we really value education, and not just K through 12, and not just for some kids, but for all kids …  then we find the money to fund it,” Carlton said.