Editor,
Recently a public task force formed to debate how to reform the so-called Lottery Scholarship since it will soon be underfunded.
Why do I refer to it as the so-called Lottery Scholarship? Because it is actually a higher education scholarship. It is currently financed by the state lottery, but it could really be funded from a variety of different revenue sources. Calling it the Lottery Scholarship artificially restricts us to thinking we have to rely on lottery proceeds. We don’t even consider all the other potential funding sources.
As it currently exists, lottery ticket consumers fund the scholarship. These people are mostly working-class and poor folks.
Yet for the most part it is not their children who receive the scholarships. Scholarship recipients generally come from middle-class and high-income households. Thus the scholarship functions as a regressive tax. People struggling to get by pay the tax burden and the well-off enjoy the educational benefits.
The terms of the scholarship further serve to advantage those who are already well-off. The scholarship does not kick in until the second semester of college. So unless students can already afford the first semester or secure a bridge scholarship, they will not become eligible for the Lottery Scholarship.
Furthermore, the Lottery Scholarship only provides for students who go directly from high school to college. This unfairly disadvantages students who attend college later in life. These nontraditional students happen to come predominantly from working-class backgrounds.
In effect, the scholarship is available only to those who are already students.
There are proposals to make the scholarship “means based” — that is, to provide scholarships mostly to students whose families could not otherwise send them to college. But opponents of such plans say that the state must continue to pay for students from high-income households so as to avoid “brain drain.” They fear that smart students will study out of state, never to return to contribute to New Mexico’s economy.
The fear of brain drain, however, is based on two faulty assumptions. First, it assumes that “brains” are disproportionately found among high-income households, and second, it assumes that state universities are incapable of producing new “brains.”
If smart wealthy students leave the state, our universities should be able to amply fill the gap by educating smart students who stay. Why should we fear brain drain, if our universities can engage in brain gain?
Not only are these assumptions questionable, a means-based scholarship has its own merits. Under such a program a greater number of New Mexicans would access higher education, not to mention a greater number of students from families who have funded the system to date.
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With the aforementioned in mind, the task force and the Legislature should consider proposals that both establish a means-basis for public scholarship eligibility and expand the funding base of the renamed Higher Education Scholarship to include nonlottery revenue sources.
Max Fitzpatrick
UNM student
