Millennium Scholarship naysayer retracts criticism

A consultant who raised a storm of protest from the governor and university system by criticizing the Millennium Scholarship program and Nevada's new dental school issued a partial retraction Wednesday.

Dennis Jones of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems said initially his data didn't support claims the Millennium Scholarship program increased the percentage of high school graduates attending the university system by 10 percent.

Gov. Kenny Guinn and university officials touted the scholarship program for all high school graduates with a B average or higher as the key to encouraging more Nevada youths to seek higher education.

He also said Nevada has a higher number of dentists per 100,000 residents than the national average - which contradicted claims used to convince lawmakers to support creation of a dental school.

Wednesday he corrected his figures on the number of dentists, saying his original data wasn't accurate and lawmakers should use the university system's numbers.

University officials, who justified creating a dental school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas by saying Nevada was critically short of dentists, said the national ratio of dentists is 60.7 per 100,000 while Nevada has just 39.2 dentists for that many residents. Jones said Wednesday they were right.

But he said his differences over the percentage of high school graduates going on to Nevada colleges is unresolved because it was caused by changes in how the state totals the number of graduates each year.

"They obviously reported something differently than in 1998 and 2000," he told the legislative committee studying higher education funding.

He said using the same methodology used by both him and the university system in 1998 and 2000, 40.3 percent of high school graduates in the state go on to college the next year in 2001 and 2002 - a minor increase over the 38 percent who went on to college before the scholarship was created.

Using a different, smaller total number of graduates, the university system came up with 47.1 percent - a significant increase.

He said in either event, some increase can probably be attributed to the Millennium Scholarship program. But he said the number had been increasing anyway.

Contact Geoff Dornan at nevadaappeal@sbcglobal.net or at 687-8750.