By Fred Abel

As higher education costs keep rising, so have the burdens of student loans. Here's how competitions for women are coming to the rescue, and what you need to know to go for the greenbacks.

If you're a young woman with plans to attend college, the current state of college costs is not a pretty picture.

In the last decade, the average annual bill for a four-year public education shot up from just under $5,000 to about $9,000. The average price tag on a private university degree grew by one-third in that time, to $23,578 a year. Meanwhile, even though the U.S. college-age population is going to grow 15 percent by 2012, state governments — facing recession and declining tax revenues —are raising tuition at state universities. According to MSN money columnist Liz Pulliam Weston, University of Kansas students saw a 25 percent price hike this year alone. As a result, since 1993, the average amount of student loans has climbed from $8,000 to $18,000.

MAO's first ever scholarship recipient — Miss America 1945 Bess Myerson

Faced with spending up to $40,000 for a four-year degree at a public university or $100,000 for one at a private institution, what's a bright young woman to do? Increasingly, the answer is: Enter a scholarship competition! It's a poorly kept secret that regional, state, and national pageant systems with scholarship prizes have become the number one provider of educational grants for college-bound women.

Above its website logo, the Miss America Organization proudly states its position as "The World's Leading Provider of Scholarships for Young Women." MAO's website lists 21 links to its sponsored scholarships and grants. The $50,000 that Miss America 2003 Erika Harold received last September is but the tip of the MAO scholarship iceberg. "A scholarship," says George F. Bauer, President/CEO of the Miss America Organization, "can be the difference between a young woman going to college or graduate school or not going at all! The Miss America Organization is proud to open up those opportunities. In the past, due to the hard work and dedication of the scholarship organizations throughout our country, we are able to make available $45 million in scholarships, up from $40 million in the years before. MAO is still the largest provider of scholarships for young women in the world."

America's Junior Miss Internet site is equally proud of its college-aid program; its moniker, placed just below its logo, is "The #1 Scholarship Program for college-bound high school girls!" Don't believe it? Just ask the eight finalists at 2001's America's Junior Miss competition; their combined local, state, and national cash educational prizes amounted to $232,800, according to AJM's published report. Since 1970, more than 250 AJM finals contestants have attended some of the most acclaimed universities in the U.S. — including 33 at Stanford, 32 at Harvard, 21 at Yale, 18 at Duke, and 17 at Georgetown, to name only the Top 5.

'A scholarship can be the difference between a young woman going to college or graduate school or not going at all! The Miss America Organization is proud to open up those opportunities.' — George F. Bauer President/CEO of the Miss America Organization

George Bauer and Erika Harold

The organizers put their college-funding intentions right into the name of America's National Teen-Ager Scholarship Foundation, which has been in business for 34 years and gave away $8.5 million worth of awards — cash scholarships and sponsored college grants — last year alone, according to National Director Cheryl Snow. She added that the foundation's goal "is to reward students for their academic excellence, volunteer work, and school and community involvement." In some states, she said, "all of our judges are admissions counselors from universities."

Winners in the Miss Teen America program also benefit from that pageant's philosophy emphasizing academics as well as personal beauty. Raven Fenmore, the program's founder, targets her program's college assistance at "young women who have not yet begun their college careers, so that they will have some choices regarding their continued education." Since 1997, Miss Teen America has distributed more than $1.5 million in cash and university-sponsored scholarship grants.

While the total annual value of such assistance from these and other pageants are impossible to ascertain, the growing impact of such largesse certainly isn't. Scholarship money flows from pageants both large and small, and, in an industry that deserves the positive recognition, the concept is catching on among many of the fastest-growing competition systems. Offering scholarships makes good business sense for competition organizers, says Michael Galanes, director of the Miss and Miss Teen Vermont USA events, because the practice "stesses the importance of education in an industry that traditionally emphasizes physical beauty and style." With the increase in scholarship offerings, he said, "educational goals and community service are more heavily weighed for the overall title."

The results of this philosophical shift are apparent in coffers of pageant systems and titleholders alike. For instance, this year's winner of the Miss Teen Arkansas International Competition came away with a $30,000 scholarship from Johnson & Wales University, said Executive Director Burnee Thurow.

The Miss Black Teen USA competition, new this year, offered a $1,000 cash scholarship, and all that pageant's entrants will have the chance to compete for a four-year scholarship. Pageant Director Michele Alexander says she hopes to add up to seven more four-year university-sponsored scholarships in the coming year. Even the youngest children can get into the scholarship act. A good example is the America's Little Darlings program, which is run as a non-profit organization and provides its youthful contestants with scholarships.

Not that any of this is exactly new. Since 1945, Miss America has provided scholarship funding to winners who have gone on to higher education. According to MAO history, the idea came to the late, legendary Lenora S. Slaughter, Miss America pageant director from 1941 to 1967, after a former winner went back to college. MAO's first scholarship recipient, Miss America 1945 Bess Myerson, was one of only 76,000 women who graduated from college annually at that time — she also was the first Miss America who already had graduated from college. By 1958, every Miss America state titleholder was assured of receiving at least a $1,000 scholarship, and that year's winner, Mary Ann Mobley, went home with a $10,000 grant. This year's sixth through 10th -place finishers received that same amount.

Early MAO scholarship success stories abound, fueling greater growth in entrant participation and grant endowments each year. One of the success stories concerns a young woman from the small town of Monroe, Michigan, who entered a local pageant near her hometown to earn scholarship money to pay for her nursing school bills. She took not only the local and state titles, but also went on to become Miss America 1988. Kaye Lani Rae Rafko earned an advanced degree and fulfilled her dream of opening a hospice for the terminally ill in Monroe.

Today, the Miss America competition provides thousands of young women each year with college funding assistance and the chance to follow in Kaye Lani's footsteps. Erika Harold, considered "the brain" at last year's competition by virtue of her acceptance at Harvard, plans to enroll at that venerable Cambridge, Massachusetts, institution of higher learning after her Miss America reign is complete. She'll be supported by not only the $50,000 scholarship that goes to the national winner, but also an additional $8,000 in aid for her separate preliminary first-place finishes in Interview and On-Stage Knowledge & Awareness competition. And let's not forget the assistance afforded at the preliminary and state levels.

Ground-breaking children's pageants also have promulgated the idea of scholarship awards. The first was the World's Our Little Miss program. Begun in 1961, that system has given millions in scholarships to children and continues to today, according to Teri Chandler, the current World's Little Miss Pageant Foundation president. Another example is the Cinderella Scholarship Program, which since 1976 has awarded more than $100,000 annually to its winners.

In recent years, the practice of offering scholarships to pageant winners has filtered over to what traditionally have been considered "beauty" pageants and other competitions. Young women who enter the regional and state levels of the Miss USA competition, for example, may compete for scholarships to Johnson & Wales University, according to Miss Vermont USA Director Michael Galanes. Miss USA 2002 Shauntay Hinton received a $45,000 scholarship for a two-year program at New York's School for Film and Television.

One good measure of how far Lenora Slaughter's scholarship idea has spread came this year at Barbizon International's competition. That's where Shaylah Goss, a 16-year-old 10th grader and Barbizon School of Modeling graduate from Bangor, Maine, was awarded a scholarship, valued at $100,000 by Barbizon, to the university of her choice. "It's a dream come true for me and my family," said Shaylah, who said she was "shocked" to receive the news from Laureen Krol, vice president of the Barbizon School of Boston. "I did not think I was going to be able to go to college. Now I can."

A LEG UP ON THE COMPETITION Today, female scholarship events offer a great way to meet some or all of your needs when the education bills come due. Here are four tips to help you assess their payoff potential and your chances of winning. PROFIT FROM NON-PROFITS. For the most part, the leading scholarship competitions with the most scholarship money operate as not-for-profit or non-profit organizations under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. As such, these scholarship competitions are legally allowed to offer tax-deductible fund-raising opportunities to contributors and sponsors, thus potentially increasing the prize pool available to winners. COMPETE CONSISTENTLY. Be realistic. The greater the prize money, the tougher the competition. So start at an early age and build your way up to the larger competitions with the bigger payoffs. At local and state events with narrow age-group ranges, the level of competition is more manageable. Prizes range from $100 Series E Savings Bonds or cash prizes, to one-to-four-year scholarships at specific sponsoring universities or varying sums of money paid by the pageant on your behalf directly to the college of your choice. DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE. Look for scholarship competition organizations that spread the money around. Will the pageant give most of its scholarships to a single winner, or do runners-up and talent winners also share in the award pool? Are the colleges sponsoring scholarships accredited? Read the organizations' ground rules beforehand to discover any stipulations, such as time limits for using the award or minimum credit-hour requirements, which could affect your chances of claiming or fully using the prize. FINISH YOUR HOMEWORK. The reigning Miss America, Erika Harold, was accepted to Harvard before she won the title! That doesn't mean you only have to have a 4.0 grade-point average and 1400's or better on your college boards to win. More important is to demonstrate diverse skills — public speaking and listening abilities, talent proficiency, ongoing community service, leadership experience — in addition to the traditional attributes of fitness, attractiveness, and poise.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE MISS AMERICA ORGANIZATION