Drug Convictions Frequently Keeping Students from College

They're blocked from federal financial aid

Young people convicted of drug charges are at higher risk of never attending college at all, thanks in part to a law blocking federal financial aid following a drug conviction, according to research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this month.

Cornell University assistant professors Michael Lovenheim and Emily Owens analyzed data in a longitudinal survey and found that a 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act, which prohibits students with drug convictions from obtaining Pell grants or other federally subsidized student aid for up to two years, often prevented those from ever attending college at all. Youth from urban areas whose mothers didn't go to college were most at risk, they found.

"Importantly, we did not find that the law deterred young people from committing dug felonies nor did it substantively change the probability that high school students with drug convictions graduated from high school," the paper said.

Comments

[buybuydandavis]

Drug prohibition – destroying children’s lives, for the children.

[-Umbriel-]

Drugs: They’ll keep you out of crushing debt.

[BuSab Agent]

That’s what I was going to say. Note you can still go to college with a drug conviction you just have to figure out how to pay as you go.

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which prohibits students with drug convictions from obtaining Pell grants or other federally subsidized student aid for up to two years, often prevented those from ever attending college at all. Youth from urban areas whose mothers didn’t go to college were most at risk, they found.

[jecobjesan]

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[Robert Enders]

They will let you get a degree while in prison. But how will tomorrow’s Clintons, Bushs, and Obamas get into an Ivy League school now?

[John Galt]

College without drug use is like a glove without a hand.

[lap83]

I have no problem with this. Many students use financial aid to prop up their baller lifestyles. I bartended in a college town for a few years and one of the busiest weekends of the year for bars always came directly after they got their financial aid checks deposited.

[Sigivald]

Youth from urban areas whose mothers didn’t go to college were most at risk, they found.

Now, I’m in favor of complete drug legalization.

(And also completely ending Federal student aid and loans, to reduce prices dramatically.)

But this thesis here seems to overlook that, as I understand it, “youth from urban areas whose mothers/parents didn’t go to college” are equally in the group that is most likely to never finish that degree if they get in in the first place.

They’re being screwed by the culture and the State education system far, far more than by being denied a possible Pell grant for two whole years.

This is not “how the drug war keeps kids from getting their degree”, is all. The war on drugs is a minor, minor side-note in the problems those “youth from urban areas …” have in graduating.