I Once Argued About the Lottery Scholarship in a Bar

In this morning’s paper, my colleague Astrid Galvan reported on solvency issues facing New Mexico’s lottery scholarship fund. Obviously, this issue touches my beat as well, since high school students who can see a plausible path to college are more likely to stay on a college-prep path.

There’s plenty to think about on this issue, but a key debate highlighted here is whether the scholarship should become merit-based, or whether it should be need-based. Since I’m not the beat reporter on this issue, I’m going to opine a little bit here.

The story highlights the fact that most students who receive the scholarship don’t actually need it: “More than half of lottery recipients come from families with $100,000 or higher incomes, while only 30 percent of come from families that make $20,000-$39,999 annually.”

Higher education secretary Jose Garcia said that “seems a little backwards,” and I agree.

This story made me think of a conversation I had in a bar once with a city staffer with an interest in policy. No, really. It’s the only time I’ve ever met this guy, but he argued vehemently that the lottery scholarship is a system in which predominantly low-income people (lottery ticket buyers) subsidize the educations of middle- to high-income people (who actually take advantage of the scholarship). I hadn’t seen the data until now, but I find it sort of convincing.

From the “full disclosure” column, it may be worthwhile to note that I was the valedictorian of my class, and I come from an upper-middle class family. I say this because there was a time in my life when I would have argued vehemently for merit-based aid. During the college search, I was frustrated by colleges that offered only need-based aid. But I think the key phrase in that sentence is “college search.” I had all the resources and family support to seek out the college of my choice, choose among various financial aid packages, and finally settle on Northeastern University (Go Huskies!). There was never, at any time, a chance that I would give up and not go to college because of financial constraints.

That is a very different situation than what confronts a first-generation college student with limited financial resources. And knowing everything we do about the achievement gap in this country, I just don’t see how we can justify giving someone like me a leg up over someone who may give up on college because their family needs the money for groceries.