LETTER: Scholarship funds in need of new direction

Editor,

We read with interest your Oct. 1 story regarding the N.M. Commission of Higher Education study that purports to rebut our research findings.

Our research, which was published as part of the Harvard study on merit-based programs like New Mexico's lottery scholarship, shows that the rate at which New Mexico high school graduates enroll in college has not been altered by the lottery scholarship. This means that scholarship funds go to students who would have attended college even without the scholarship.

The commission does not in fact, refute this finding. Instead, the commission emphasizes the large number of students who have received the scholarship and that many of the beneficiaries have received, or continue to work toward their degrees.

Of course a program that grants many scholarships will help many students. But it is relevant to ask if these are the students who really need help. At UNM, only 22 percent of the lottery scholarship recipients in our study came from families with incomes of $40,000 or less. This means that the great majority of lottery scholarships help students from families with higher incomes.

Since its inception in 1997, the lottery scholarship has paid out nearly $75 million to help defray the costs of college. But the program has failed to boost the rate of college entry and has overwhelmingly benefited non-poor families. We question whether this is the wisest use of public funds. A program that guaranteed low-income students a tuition-free college education early on, say, in middle school, that gave students incentives for pursuing a college-prep curriculum and that provided incentives for schools to offer this curriculum, would more effectively expand college access for residents of our state.

We believe that expanding college access is better public policy than is reducing costs for those who will attend college anyway.

Melissa Binder and Philip Ganderton

UNM faculty