The Wyoming Senate has passed a pair of bills that would increase payouts and add flexibility to the state’s Hathaway Scholarship program.
The Hathaway Scholarship is available to every in-state high school graduate and is a key source of financial support for many students attending the University of Wyoming (UW) or one of the state’s eight public community colleges. The scholarship doles out about $16 million a year, but the rising cost of higher education and inflation in general have reduced the scholarship’s power.
The Senate included both bills on its third reading consent list on Wednesday, advancing both without further discussion. Now they will head to the House.
Boosting Hathaway payments
At its inception two decades ago, the top level Hathaway Scholarship covered about 90% of a student’s tuition and fees at UW. Today, it covers 40% of those costs.
SF 47 seeks to address that diminished capacity. It would increase the Hathaway award at all levels by about 70%.
During the bill’s initial reading on the Senate floor, Sen. Charles Scott (R-Casper) said top-achieving high school students have lots of scholarship offers and financial support.
“The place where the Hathaway has made the difference has been for the average student from the average family who aren't especially eligible for many of the scholarships, but who can tremendously benefit from the Hathaway,” he said. “What's going wrong is that we have not kept up.”
Sen. Larry Hicks (R-Baggs) said he was concerned UW would just raise tuition to capture more of the payment, nullifying the benefit to students.
“Last time we did this, and we increased the Hathaway scholarship, the University of Wyoming just increased tuition,” he said. “So it was just a push. We give more money, and then they just give it to the university anyway.”
Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) said the UW Board of Trustees, which sets tuition, announces planned increases well in advance so that they are predictable.
“And they do that actually based on, to a large degree, this debate from probably a decade ago, when it was a concern,” Rothfuss said. “The trustees wanted to make sure that they were being pre-transparent about their expectations of tuition increases so that they weren't affecting this debate. They're going to increase their tuition at the announced amount, regardless of what policies are done here with respect to the Hathaway.”
UW regularly increases in-state tuition by 4% per year, and will again do so ahead of the 2026-2027 academic year.
The Hathaway awards, meanwhile, have been increased only once and not for more than a decade. In 2014, they were given a 5% bump, according to a 2025 legislative fact sheet.
The Senate voted 26 to 4 to advance the bill. It now heads to the House for further consideration.
The lump sum proposal
Another bill that’s also been advanced out of Wyoming’s upper chamber is SF 36, which would allow the Hathaway to be paid out to students in a lump sum rather than over eight consecutive semesters as it is now.
Rothfuss said the current pay schedule works for traditional students seeking a four-year degree, but less so for students enrolled in alternative programs.
A student seeking a two-year associate’s degree at a public community college must abandon two years, or four semesters, of their earned Hathaway payout.
“The concept here is recognizing that not all students are looking for eight semesters in a traditional format where you just decide, ‘I’m going to college’ … and then you spend the next four years, semester by semester, going through the college experience,” Rothfuss said. “Recipients at the University of Wyoming probably will follow that path, but we know that we have a lot of students that don’t follow that path.”
He added students receiving lower levels of the Hathaway award are even less likely to be pursuing four-year degrees. At the lowest level, the Hathaway pays for only 20% of tuition and fees at UW.
“The idea that a student is planning on eight semesters to use that scholarship, to basically step aside in life to get a four year degree, is trivial; that’s not a very high percentage outcome,” Rothfuss said. “We’re not providing those students with the opportunity to really achieve their interest with the lump sum approach.”
The Senate voted 28 to 2 to advance the lump sum bill on third reading. It will now head to the House for further consideration.
The bills we lost along the way
A third bill that also aimed to alter the Hathaway program died early, failing introduction in the House on the first day of the session. That bill was filed in Wyoming’s lower chamber as HB 57 and would have allowed a smaller Hathaway Scholarship to be used for tuition at private colleges.
The Hathaway, a state scholarship, has been limited to UW and the state’s public community colleges since its inception. The bill expanding it to private institutions received a 39-23 vote, just three votes short of the two-thirds threshold required for introduction during a budget session.
During the interim between the 2025 general session and the 2026 budget session, the Joint Education Committee considered, but rejected, two other Hathaway bills. One would have loosened eligibility requirements. The other would have expanded the Hathaway to career and technical education programs.
At the time, lawmakers expressed interest in expanding the Wyoming Works Program to better help students in CTE programs rather than expanding the Hathaway.
Both of these interim proposals were killed by the joint committee and were not filed this session.
