Swickard: An effective incentive for graduation

Commentary by Michael Swickard, Ph.D. - The Lottery Scholarship pays tuition for certain New Mexico students and despite all of the hoopla, it is only a semi-good idea. For one thing, the primary idea should be to get the students to graduate. College is supposed to be an Alumni Mill, cranking out Alumni in increasing numbers. This being graduation time, that is what we focus on. But the Lottery Scholarship is focused on attendance. The incentive is to go to college, not graduate. When you graduate the money stops. Picture this: at each graduation, before awarding the degrees, some names are drawn. There are the usual dinners and car washes but then comes the better prizes. Several (lucky?) students get free tuition on their next degree. Even better, several get their student loans paid in full. Then will come the moment that has caused all of the media attention. One lucky graduate each graduation gets one million dollars paid over twenty years. I bet that would spice up the ceremony. How the entry tickets are calculated is even better. Every college credit a student takes translates to one entry so changing majors several times is not quite so bad, as long as the student eventually graduates. Further, they could even get three tickets for each A, two for each B and one for each C. Sorry, nothing for a D. On a larger scale, perhaps the school leaders would factor more tickets for harder degrees. Electrical Engineers would be envied because they earn ten times the number of tickets for each A as someone in a "less demanding" program. At graduation one student may have accumulated 5,000 entries while a classmate only has 1,000. Again, only those who finish get to be in the drawing. Each college would be reinforcing graduation rather than just time spent in college. Read column

Swickard: An effective incentive for graduation