President Bush, when he was Governor of Texas also started a bunch of similar government programs to help the various youth. Since Texas has a lot of underprivileged white people living in small towns, a lot of his programs specially targeted them and there was no backlash, everyone actually supported those programs. And yes, those programs did involve free tuition to state public schools, free mentoring, free tutoring and other such things (though I don't think any scholarships were provided). A friend's white girlfriend who lived in a teeny tiny city was one of the people I know who personally benefited from the program.
I don't understand why George Bush can make government programs to help children and everybody approves of them, while Obama does substantially less and a lot of people criticize him for it.