Editorial: Turning a merit scholarship into a giveaway program

When the state House considers a bill to lower already-low academic requirements for TOPS “merit” scholarships for technical training after high school, voters ought to sit up and take notice.

Do we want to just give away grants to students who perform as poorly as those state Rep. Kenny Cox, D-Coushatta, wants to reward?

The TOPS Tech checks are part of the larger program that is best-known for providing tuition waivers for students at four-year colleges. The ACT requirement for those expensive vouchers is too low in general, at 20. But Louisiana is nothing if not a state where standards are more flexible than sensible.

House Bill 164 would lower the already minimal requirement of at least a 17 on the ACT college preparation test for technical and community college courses. At the proposed level of just 15 — the 20th percentile in Louisiana — the taxpayer would pick up the tab for probably a few million dollars a year.

Maybe that’s not a ton of money in the overall state budget, but funding technical and community college courses for students at that level almost ensures, statistically, that many “scholarship” students won’t complete the courses. Those recipients, sadly, will be encouraged on a path they can’t complete, as members of the House Education Committee should have discerned before approving this bill.

If this is intended to boost enrollment in technical training, it’s the wrong way to do it. We urge the full House to rethink this giveaway approach to “merit” awards.