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Thursday, January 11, 2007
College: ‘It Could Be You’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I keep seeing that new TV commercial from the folks at the Georgia Lottery Corp. announcing they’ve hit the 1,000,000th HOPE recipient. Usually, the lottery deals in dollars, but this time the million refers to a college student.
According to the commercial, as of this year, a million students have headed off to institutions of higher learning with a HOPE scholarship courtesy of the lottery’s scratch-off cards, Quik Pik tickets and numerous cash-prize games.
When I started perusing Gov. Sonny Perdue’s new budget last night, my attention quickly turned to lottery revenues, more than $500 million of which will go toward scholarships next year.
Since the first HOPE scholarship was awarded in 1993, $3 billion has been spent on HOPE scholars. That’s a lot of dough, especially when you consider that many often lose the grant because of poor grades. So my question today is one of economics: Has HOPE been worth the cost or could those funds have been put to better use?
