Employees of the South Carolina Education Lottery celebrated the second anniversary of the games Wednesday, with birthday cake, singing and a new television ad highlighting where some of the money it's raised has gone.

The lottery has provided more than 100,000 scholarships in its two years, and the commercial is some of the students who've received them talking about their importance.

When the lottery was first proposed, one of its selling points was that it could provide free tuition to the state's technical colleges. So is that what's happening two years later?

Lawrence Ray, director of communications for the state's technical college system, says, "It's worked out to where the tuition assistance has covered approximately 75 percent of the tuition cost, because tuition cost, unfortunately, has been rising in the state of South Carolina. But it's been a tremendous asset to assist students in attending higher education."

One of those is Dan Weaver, a student at Midlands Technical College in Columbia. He was buying books Wednesday for classes that start Monday. "It pays for about half my tuition," he says of the lottery assistance he receives. "I have to pay for books and everything, but it helps a lot."

Students at the state's technical colleges and two-year colleges have received about $68 million in tuition assistance from the lottery. And more and more students are taking advantage of the help. Statewide, there's been a 48 percent increase in the number of students at technical colleges getting lottery tuition assistance.

Kendra Rivers already has a 4-year college degree, but she's back in technical college studying nursing. She's getting more than $700 in lottery tuition assistance this semester, which pays for most of her classes. "My husband and I are both in school right now. He's in a grad program. So if I didn't have a little extra help, it would be a lot harder on our family," she says.

Overall, the lottery sold about $1.5 billion worth of tickets its first two years. More than $429 million of that went to education. After paying out prizes and the costs of running the games, 32 cents of every dollar goes to education.

To mark the lottery's second birthday, players can get a free T-shirt for a limited time. All they have to do is take two non-winning tickets to a lottery claims office.