A few years ago here in Tennessee, one of the state representatives (who’s now a US Congressman) finally got a lottery passed (they actually had to amend the State Constitution to do it). The idea was to give scholarships to needy kids so they can go to college.

Since then, college costs have gone through the roof. I don’t doubt at all that this increase is being fed by the glut of college students who are getting lottery grants to go to college.

It’s simple supply and demand (which, ironically, those kids are probably not learning about once they get to college).

What’s happened is that kids that probably shouldn’t be in college are entering college now. They’re going to go and waste a year or two and finally figure out that they should’ve been in a vocational school or working on the family farm or in the factory instead. What the elites don’t seem to understand is that not everyone should go to college. They just throw money at kids and tell them to go.

As a result of non-academically-qualified kids getting “scholarships”, they’ve had to lower the GPA requirements in order to keep those kids from dropping out. I think the GPA requirement when the program started was a 3.0. Now it’s 2.75.

I anticipate that the more kids who lose eligibility to remain in the HOPE scholarship program, the more pressure on the legislature there’ll be to lower that GPA standard yet again. So, more kids will stay in college who shouldn’t be there, all the while driving up the costs for those who really could get something out of it.

The lottery looked like a good idea at the time. Heck, I’m not even opposed to the lottery on principle. But the only way they could get a lottery in Tennessee was to dedicate the money to higher education and (in apparently rare instances), pre-K and after school programs (I’m not sure of those latter two have seen a penny yet).

But it appears now in hindsight that they wanted a lottery for the lottery’s sake. It would have been better to put that money back into the state’s general fund so that those who wanted to tax themselves voluntarily could at least help the rest of us.