Schreyer Honors College is increasing its scholarship money from $2,500 to $3,500 beginning in the fall, but this increase will only be given to the recipients of the incoming freshmen class of 2006.

This is a 40 percent increase that is being implemented in an attempt to attract top-quality students to the Honors College as well as more out-of-state students, Clay Calvert, interim dean of the Schreyer Honors College and associate professor of communication and law, said.

However, students already in and continuing with the Honors College will not receive the increase in scholarship funding.

Scholarship rates for these students will continue to be the $2,500 that they were offered when they first entered the Honors College, Mitch Kirsch, director of administrative operations, said.

"I don't think that this will cause any problems among the students because many of the continuing students have access to other scholarships within their majors that the incoming freshmen students will not," Kirsch said.

Penn State University has increased the amount of money given to the Honors College, which is now allowing the college to increase the scholarship for the incoming freshmen students and allowing it to continue to be competitive in recruiting more students, Kirsch said.

"We are extremely grateful to the university and their commitment to the Honors College because this increase really helps us to continue to attract the best and the brightest to Penn State," Calvert said.

There was an increase in scholarship money at one other time since the founding of the Honors College. The former scholarship increase was from $2,250 to the current $2,500 award -- and that change was phased in for the first-year students as well, Calvert said.

Meesha Ahuja, president of the Schreyer Honor College student council, believes that the increase in scholarship money will not cause an upset among other students in the Honors College.

"The way I look at it is that since the time I was a freshman, the tuition has gone up by at least $1,000, so it kind of evens out," Ahuja said. "Also, I am not personally bothered by it, because I did not choose the Honors College based on the scholarship that I would be given but because it offers the opportunities of a small college on a large campus."

Christina Cress (senior-microbiology), a student in the Honors College, said that it would be unfair to start a new policy in the middle of someone's college career. She said she thinks that because of the need for balance, it makes sense to only give the scholarship increase to the incoming freshmen class, and all of the following classes.

Calvert said extending the scholarship increase to current students was not feasible.

"Obviously, in an ideal world, we would give as much money as we could to as many students as we could," Calvert said. "But this is just not possible to do with the budget we are given."