K.I.S.S. (& H.)

 

We disagreed with Bill Halter on the advisability of creating a lottery in Arkansas that gives government a vested interest in promoting long-odds gambling, even for such a laudable goal as college scholarships. But now that the people have ruled, we find the lieutenant governor more agreeable all the time.

As Arkansas Business first reported last summer, the state of Arkansas is sitting on an accumulation of some $52 million in scholarship money that has not been distributed. You know that’s not because we just don’t have enough kids who need money for college. The problem is too few qualified students applied for the money, and that may be because the eligibility requirements are too complicated or just don’t match the state’s needs.

The lottery money will be new money – the amendment voters approved specifically says that it should augment, not supplant, existing scholarship funds. And it was sold to voters as a way to increase the population of college graduates in our state – period.

There is something appealing in the idea of making the scholarships available first to students from low-income families because, let’s face it, those are the families that are going to be buying the most lottery tickets with money they really can’t afford to lose. But income guidelines are arbitrary, complicated and off-putting, and Arkansas needs college graduates so desperately that Halter’s goal of “simple, universal and fair” makes good sense.

It may be that the Arkansas Hope Scholarship, like the Georgia Hope Scholarship that inspired it, mainly increases college-going rates in-state by keeping more kids from going out-of-state. That’s OK, too. Leaving for college too often means leaving Arkansas forever.

There is also something appealing about making students work really hard to get and keep the money that is being raised at such a mighty cost. But a college graduate with a 2.5 GPA who stays in-state to study and work is infinitely more valuable to Arkansas than a Phi Beta Kappa candidate who heads off for Boston and never looks back.

So we like the formula that is emerging: Money for any Arkansas high school graduate with a 2.5 grade-point average (or a 19 on the ACT exam) who enrolls in a two- or four-year college in Arkansas. We like the idea of sending the money to the individual student’s college account, so that the dollars follow the student.

Exactly how big the lottery-funded scholarships will be remains to be seen. We fear that Halter’s prediction that the lottery will rake in $100 million annually is right; we fear it because much of it will come from the pockets of the poor. Whatever the take, it’s good to see lawmakers planning for the worst and for the best.

So, K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple, Senate. And that goes for the House, too.