Sex, drugs and money
Looks like college students are going to have to start paying more for sex. Friday, The Associated Press reported that an obscure provision in a 2005 federal deficit-reduction bill has resulted in drug companies revoking steep discounts they used to offer to college health providers to sell contraceptives. That might seem like a raw deal for cash-strapped college students, but the fact of the matter is that the federal government should never have been in the business of giving incentives for cheap contraceptives in the first place. Federal subsidies for, say, highways are one thing, but using taxpayer money to bankroll college whoopee is hardly a prudent use of public funds.
Can you hear the voters now?
Another year, another batch of studies: The New York Times reported yesterday that a series of new research papers have (again) concluded that using a cell phone while driving poses a danger to everyone on the road. Meanwhile, a band of activists in Phoenix have coalesced to put a proposition on the 2008 ballot that would ban cell phone use while driving. Even so, the group’s ban would allow an exception for “”hands-free”” earpieces that allow drivers to use both hands to steer. That might seem reasonable, but the same studies that urge a cell phone ban while driving have found that the response time with hands-free sets is still dangerously delayed. State legislators who have been unwilling to defy the cell companies’ battery of lobbyists lack political courage, but the citizens group should rework their proposition to rid the road of all cell phone implements that wreak havoc on our roads.
As the Crow flies
While Arizona State University President Michael Crow might like to put another feather in his cap – ASU was recently featured in a sprawling USA Today feature – he also might want to rethink his plan to increase total enrollment to 90,000. Alternately hailed in USA Today as “”big, bustling and relentlessly new”” and as “”a place that, like China, holds the promise of endless opportunity,”” Crow and ASU come off smelling sweet as roses. What the article obviously failed to mention, though, is the basic economic principle of diseconomies of scale, which essentially holds that the bigger you get, the more costs will increase and the less efficient you will become. Of course, that might bode well for the UA, which hopes to steadily increase its admissions standards (and let ASU become the “”catchall”” school in the process).
You’ve got mail
Students might not have realized it, but Arizona voters passed a landmark proposition last November that’s just now starting to impact state universities. Proposition 300, which bars illegal immigrants from being eligible for in-state tuition, requires that students who are not citizens or legal residents of the U.S., or who do not have lawful immigration status, must provide documentation to the UA to retain in-state status. An e-mail was sent to the student body, but administrators are worried that students are simply deleting the e-mail. Students should be more conscientious, though: Failure to provide documentation could mean that certain students will have to start paying out-of-state tuition, a difference of almost $7,500. We have our qualms about Proposition 300, but in the meantime, students should check their e-mail if they want to avoid a large (and probably unexpected) bill in the fall.
