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It is graduation weekend with all of those happy graduates ready to hit the trail. They are the success stories, at least those who get a job. For the ones who don’t, there is always another degree to pursue forestalling entry into the job market. Many students just drift away from college without a degree. The New Mexico Lottery Scholarship pays tuition for certain New Mexico students - those continuing their education directly from high school and maintaining a 2.5 GPA. Despite all of the hoopla, it is only a semi-good idea. For one thing, isn’t the primary idea to get the students to graduate? NMSU 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. It is the same way that NMSU is compensated for teaching—by the number of students they teach, not the number who graduate. If the educational leaders in New Mexico really want kids to graduate they should aim the incentive on graduation. How about a graduation lottery? 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 comes that 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 you eventually graduate. Since NMSU has a fast mainframe computer to calculate all of this, they could even give 3 tickets for each A, 2 for each B and 1 for each C. Sorry, nothing for a D. On a larger scale, perhaps they would factor more tickets for harder degrees. Electrical Engineers would be envied because they earn three times the number tickets for each A as someone in a “less demanding” program. At graduation one students may have accumulated 5,000 entries while a classmate only has 1,000. Again, only those who finish get to be in the drawing. NMSU would be reinforcing graduation rather than just time spent in college. Look at some of the other benefits, every action deemed important at NMSU could be quantified into entries. Picking up trash, voting in student elections, being pleasant while standing in line, eating vegetables, and of course, paying parking tickets. Everything worthwhile on campus could contribute to your total number of entries. Instead of a few thousand entries students could earn millions. We could call them Aggie Points, one point equals one entry. Imagine, “How many APs do you have?” “Oh, I’ve got about 16 million—I figure 20 million is what the lucky stiff who won last year had, so I’m trying to max out above that.” It would discourage cheating because each student is trying to get as many APs as possible. They would not dilute the pool of entries by helping someone cheat. This would be AP lust pure and simple. There could even be a counter effect so that when students do things wrong they lose points. There could be a spitting assessment so that dippers and chewers of tobacco are fined one entry each time they spit on the sidewalk. The campus would be driven by graduation. NMSU would also benefit because the national news media would come to graduation to see the lucky one each graduation. Songs on the radio would talk about unrequited Aggie Points. Maybe there would be a Movie-of-the-Week about a poor starving Philosophy student, holding little hope of employment after graduation, who is lifted up with the money and never has to eat Ramen Noodles again. It would put Las Cruces on the map! Every student would graduate. Yes, this is an idea that could revolutionize higher education as we know it. All because we reinforce graduation instead of attendance. © 2003 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. |
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