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Now we have them, let’s keep them

Long-time, long-suffering advocates of the state lottery can now commence crowing. State Sen. Steven Cohen comes to mind. The Memphis Democrat worked tirelessly for more than a decade to get the referendum needed for a constitutional amendment passed and the law creating the lottery passed. He slaved on against the opposition who labeled him a purveyor of sin. His labors are vindicated by the scholarships the lottery is providing for the first time this fall. It works.

The idea of stimulating the best and brightest to stay in their home state for their college educations appealed to Tennessee voters and drove the lottery through the Legislature.

The first six months of lottery proceeds have netted more than $125 million for state education purposes. Thirty-five thousand students have been awarded scholarships—ranging from $3,000 to $4,000 depending on family income and qualifying test scores—for the coming year. The best students and the students from the least moneyed backgrounds are getting the most help. It means that half the job of working your way through college is working your way through high school—by studying what’s presented in college preparatory courses. The lottery scholarships are the reward for that work. It makes going to college that much easier, financially.

The result is the highest grade-point average and ACT test scores in any freshman class ever enrolled at the University of Tennessee here in Knoxville. It’s also the largest freshman class in more than 20 years. It stretches our already strapped university to maintain the basic offerings to these smart, eager students who expect to reap the full benefit of a college education in the best of educational settings.

Opponents of authorized, regulated gambling for good causes listen up. We’ve got just one word for them: Bingo.

Now, it’s up to the tax-paying public and its representatives in the Legislature and the governor’s office and the higher-educational establishment to give those students a better college experience than we’ve been willing to offer.

This state has the wherewithal to produce a university system on equal footing with any state of comparable size and with comparable resources. We’ve complained too long that our taxes are too high when we have among the lowest total tax bills in America. There is no tax and revenue stream more important to us than the one that funds education, kindergarten through graduate school. There is no service the state provides that is more vital to the future.

What we’ve shown with the lottery scholarship program is that we can keep top students here to go to college and make the kinds of personal and professional contacts that may spur them to live and work in Tennessee when they’ve completed their degrees.

Dividends from that kind of mind retention could be staggeringly effective in terms of promoting the state’s economic and cultural development. Our investment in our state’s colleges and universities should return manifold over time if we give these students we’ve been striving to keep at home a university system worthy of them. Why aren’t we thinking of that, all of us, and demanding that more of our tax dollars go where they’ll do the most good? There is no better, more productive place to spend public money than on education.

August 5, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 32 © 2004 Metro Pulse