The Department of Education decided last week to make applicants for federal college aid answer a question about prior drug convictions or lose the chance to receive financial aid. Previously, students could choose not to answer this question without penalty. The question complies with a provision of the 1998 Higher Education Act called the Drug-Free Student Loans Act, and it renders students with prior drug convictions ineligible to receive federal aid.
First-time offenders can receive aid after a year, second-time offenders after two years and third-time offenders after an indefinite period. By successfully completing a recognized drug treatment program, students can shorten their ineligibility periods.
While the stance that people who break government laws should not be granted federal money to pay for their education makes sense ideologically, the department should not single out drug convictions. Instead of excluding former drug convicts from receiving federal aid, the department should move to focus on people who have been convicted on violent offenses, such as battery, rape or armed robbery.
This policy also has the potential to prevent racial minorities from accessing federal aid. For example, blacks, who make up 12 percent of the country’s population and 13 percent of its drug users, account for one third of all drug-related arrests and nearly two thirds of all convictions, according to the Drug Reform Coordination Network website. Because of this disproportionate number of blacks with drug convictions, this federal aid policy would perpetuate this inconsistency by essentially blocking many former black drug convicts from the chance to attend colleges and universities.
Additionally, this policy is unfair because there are programs that allow convicts to receive a free college education while still in prison. Specifically, Boston University offers such a program in partnership with the Framingham Jail. How can anyone justify facilitating higher education for prisoners while people who have served their sentences are denied federal money?
The Department of Education should reconsider their policy and how it affects who has the chance to access higher education. Instead of developing laws that dance around the issue of drug abuse, the government should focus on attacking the problem at its root. This policy is not a direct approach to the problem. Education can be a vehicle to change people’s lives for the better, and by denying former drug convicts of federal aid, the department is making it nearly impossible for some of these offenders to improve their situations.
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