WHY TARGET DRUG CONVICTIONS BUT IGNORE OTHERS?

Nothing is quite as popular as a quick fix for a complicated problem. And
often nothing turns out to be quite as nonsensical.

Thousands of college students and their parents are about to find out just
how nonsensical, as their requests for federal financial aid are rejected
because of drug convictions.

Superficially, this makes great sense as a way to send students a tough
anti-drug message. Or so the Bush administration thought when, upon taking
office, it decided to start strictly enforcing a 1998 law barring financial
aid to people with recent drug records. Halfway through the process,
several thousand applicants have already been turned down.

Look closer, and the rejected students are right to howl. The government
doesn't even ask about serious crimes such as rape and murder. In fact, the
most useful purpose of Bush's policy is to point out the unfair absurdities
built into the entire $12 billion financial aid system. The drug provision
is one of dozens enacted with too little thought to their broader impact.
The result is a crazy-quilt system that wastes money, invites abuse and
doesn't serve those it was designed to help.

The motive of Congress in writing these provisions is politics, pure and
simple. While the latest outrage is an effort to look tough in the drug
war, a raft of older provisions is aimed at wooing middle-class voters by
making their kids eligible for the program. Consider these:

• Although a family's welfare payments must be counted in financial-aid
determinations, a family's million-dollar house isn't considered an asset.
Neither is a half-million-dollar 401(k) account.

• Children of parents who are 50 when their kids go to college will get
more financial aid than identically situated kids whose parents are 40.

• A high school senior whose parents are divorced and who lives with his
mom does not have to report his dad's income to determine whether he's poor.

• Often the amount of financial aid available depends on the cost of the
school. Identical families with identical children will get different
amounts of subsidized loans depending on whether the student chooses a
state school or a private school.

Even the Department of Education's own researchers admit that the result is
a system rife with gaming. According to a 1999 Census study, kids from
families with incomes above $50,000 get slightly more financial aid than
kids whose parents make half that.

The Department of Education has pushed for changes because students and
their parents were going to extremes to find cracks in the rules. But as
Congress has reined in past abuses, it has added different loopholes to
avoid alienating middle-class families.

The Clinton administration took a similar head-in-the-sand approach to the
law denying financial aid to students with drug convictions. Under the
administration's "don't tell when asked" approach, students who honestly
answered the federal government's questions about drug convictions were
punished; those who refused to answer got their government cash.

Spurred by angry parents, students and college administrators, Democrats
now are pushing to repeal the drug law. But their approach is too limited.

The entire financial aid system is diseased. Rather than treat only one
symptom, Congress and the Bush administration need to seek a broader cure.