{"id":138637,"date":"2016-03-25T09:39:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-25T15:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=138637"},"modified":"2016-03-28T05:38:30","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T11:38:30","slug":"a-dubious-bet-on-college-and-economic-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/03\/a-dubious-bet-on-college-and-economic-development\/","title":{"rendered":"A dubious bet on college and economic development"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A

Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>

Sending more of New Mexico\u2019s high-school graduates off to college, while providing insufficient employment opportunities for them after graduation, is profoundly unwise policy, Dowd Muska argues.<\/p><\/div>\n

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>This year marks the 20th anniversary of New Mexico\u2019s\u00a0Legislative Lottery Scholarship Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there isn\u2019t much to celebrate.<\/p>\n

\"D.

Courtesy photo<\/p>

D. Dowd Muska<\/p><\/div>\n

A well-intentioned attempt to boost access to higher learning in the Land of Enchantment, the program was crafted by a Democratic legislature and Republican governor. But it suffers from a serious, if seldom-discussed, flaw.<\/p>\n

Lottery scholarships certainly don\u2019t have a popularity problem. A report by the New Mexico Higher Education Department found that between 2000 and 2014, the number of program recipients doubled. Expenditures, of course, ballooned as well, rising to $66.8 million in the 2014 fiscal year.<\/p>\n

By law, the New Mexico Lottery Authority is required to set aside 30 percent of monthly gross revenue for scholarships. But solvency has been an issue for years — in 2014, gamblers supplied just 61 percent of the program\u2019s funding. A slumping economy and a decline in \u201cscratcher\u201d sales sent legislators and the authority scrambling for cost savings and new monies. Eligibility was tightened, and the number of semesters covered for a four-year degree fell from eight to seven.<\/p>\n

Tobacco-settlement revenue has been transferred to the tuition fund, and special appropriations have been made. In 2014, legislators began to divert a portion of the revenue stream from New Mexico\u2019s excise tax on liquor. In the just-completed session, lawmakers required the lottery authority to devote unclaimed-prize cash to scholarships. (Governor Martinez vetoed the bill.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

A program that once relied on the voluntary contributions of gamblers — no one is forced to play the lottery — is now grabbing dollars any way it can. Lottery scholarships have been allowed to proceed on this unsustainable path because no state-subsidization policy enjoys greater bipartisan support. The bill to use forfeited-prized revenue passed the Senate 35-4 and House of Representatives 66-0.<\/p>\n

Praise from the program\u2019s administrators is effusive.\u00a0Bob Frank, the president of the University of New Mexico<\/a>, called lottery scholarships \u201ccritical to helping New Mexico students graduate so they can contribute to our state\u2019s knowledge-based economy.\u201d Dan Salzwedel, chairman of the\u00a0lottery authority\u2019s board<\/a>, concurs: \u201cHelping young people acquire more knowledge and greater employment opportunities through a college education enriches all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nice rhetoric. Here are the facts.\u00a0New Mexico has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation — and\u00a0joblessnesses is typically\u00a0lowest\u00a0for the college-educated<\/a>. The Land of Enchantment is stubbornly hostile to real economic-development policies, such as a right-to-work law, tax simplification\/relief, and deregulation. With few jobs available, it\u2019s hardly surprising that the millennial generation sees no future for itself in the Land of Enchantment.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew data from The University of New Mexico,\u201d\u00a0The Santa Fe New Mexican\u00a0reported last year, \u201cshows for the first time that the largest percentage of those leaving the state are educated professionals with a bachelor\u2019s degree.\u201d The paper\u2019s Bruce Krasnow made the inconvenient observation that many millennials \u201chave gone to a state university tuition-free with a lottery scholarship and\u00a0then left the state as they saw more opportunity elsewhere<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

How many? We don\u2019t know. In an email interview, Harrison Rommel, the Higher Education Department\u2019s Financial Aid Director, wrote that his agency \u201chas not done any long-term longitudinal studies regarding retention in New Mexico after graduation. This would require data agreements with the Department of Workforce Solutions and\/or other agencies, and we are not capable of performing that type of analysis at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

One would think that after 20 years, the lottery scholarship\u2019s overseers would have requested, and funded, a look at \u201cretention in New Mexico after graduation.\u201d Apparently, pleasing voters and rewarding higher-education personnel matter more than performing a cost-benefit review of a subsidy that spends tens of millions of dollars annually.<\/p>\n

Sending more of New Mexico\u2019s high-school graduates off to college, while providing insufficient employment opportunities for them after graduation, is profoundly unwise policy. It\u2019s time to provide taxpayers an independent, honest evaluation of the lottery-scholarship program.<\/p>\n

Dowd Muska (dmuska@riograndefoundation.org<\/a>) is research director for\u00a0New Mexico\u2019s Rio Grande Foundation<\/a>, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sending more of New Mexico\u2019s high-school graduates off to college, while providing insufficient employment opportunities for them after graduation, is profoundly unwise policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[3250,234,118,125,133,107,3276],"class_list":["post-138637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-2016-legislative-session","tag-children","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-nmsu","tag-roundhouse","tag-unm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}