NM Lottery Scholarship wins big

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - The New Mexico Lottery announced Monday that it raised $41.3 million last fiscal year for lottery scholarships.
 
That's the second biggest year ever for the program which has put thousands of young New Mexicans through college.

But it still needs still more, because each year more students are taking advantage of the scholarship.

For every one-dollar ticket sold, 30 cents goes to the New Mexico Lottery Scholarship fund. It's paid for 75,000 New Mexico students to attend college in the past 15 years.

News 13 has reported on the struggles the state lottery fund has gone through this year to pay for all of the students.

Recently they got help from the big games, a $656 million jackpot in March was the largest in history. Plus the price of a Powerball ticket was raised this year from one dollar to two dollars.

"Boy, it sure doesn't hurt when you have a historic Mega Millions jackpot or a great Powerball jackpot. People really do get out and play," said New Mexico Lottery Spokesperson Linda Hamlin.

The number of students that use the scholarship has grown almost every year since it began in 1996. In 2010, 20,000 students were using the scholarship.

In the last few years the lottery has had to dip into reserves to cover all the students in the program. It is unclear if they'll have to do that again.