Our View: Lottery would help education

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

On election day voters in Arkansas will have a chance to pass a constitutional amendment allowing the legislature to create a state lottery. Advocates of the lottery say the game will generate $100 million which will be used to provide scholarships for Arkansans to attend any two or four year college. The state has tried to create a lottery in the past, but voters have always turned it down. We hope this time it will pass. We understand that some people object to gambling on moral grounds. It's your right to vote your convictions. Let's look at the facts though about what a lottery would do for Arkansas. Currently, Arkansas is dead last in the nation in the number of college graduates. About 17 percent of Arkansans hold a bachelors degree. That is embarrassing. That is not something that we want our state to be last in. Surely, we can do better. We have to or else we will continue to see our children move away to other states for better paying jobs. Today's job market demands an educated workforce. The state presently only has $40 million to give away to college-bound students to help with the costs of college. And college, as you know, is expensive. The average Arkansas college student will owe $17,000 in loans by the time they graduate. Having another $100 million available through a lottery will help a lot of students go to college. In July, the Georgia Lottery announced that it has given $10 billion -- that's billion with a B -- for education to the state since its inception in 1993. Georgia's HOPE -- Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally -- scholarships pays for four years of full tuition as well as a $300 book stipend at a Georgia public university, college or technical school for students who graduate. This money has allowed more than one million students to go to college in Georgia. In 2004, 76.2 percent of all first-time college freshmen from Georgia received HOPE funds. A study published in 2006 found that freshman enrollment at state schools increased 15 percent between 1997 and 1998. Enrollment by African Americans at all Georgia colleges and universities increased nearly 70 percent since HOPE's inception. The Georgia lottery set opening-week lottery sales record of more than 52 million tickets and within five months, the Lottery met its first-year sales goals of $463 million and ended its first full year with $1.1 billion in sales. Assuming projections are right, even if Arkansas took in $100 million, that's $100 million more than we would have had. Arkansans are already playing the lottery. Mr. T's in Cardwell, Mo. is the number one selling lottery retail outlet in Missourri. The difference is, that money from Arkansas goes to help pay for scholarships for kids in Missouri. Why not keep it here? If you don't like the lottery, don't play it. Nobody is forcing you to buy a ticket. But when you go to the voting booth in November, think of the future of Arkansas for once and what that kind of money could do for our children.

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