Tax money for Bible study

All you seniors graduating, listen up: We've got a quick way for you and a few friends to make a million bucks. \nStart a college.\nThat's right -- you're graduating from one, and starting a new college could help you snag a cool million from the federal government, which has shamefully green-lighted an unaccredited, non-degree-granting university to receive $1 million while cutting back student aid for accredited, degree-granting universities. \nAlaska Christian College has 37 students. That's no typo. Thirty-seven students attend the unaccredited institution, and they won't get degrees, because the school doesn't offer them. Instead they get a "certificate of biblical studies" after one year. The school has applied for accreditation from the Association for Biblical Higher Education. \nACC, at the tender age of five-years-old, has earned the respect of your U.S. Department of Education. The school has gotten in the past two years more than $1 million in non-competitive grants from taxpayer coffers. The earmarked funds were orchestrated by Alaska's three representatives in the House. \nThis story appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education the same day as a story headlined: "Budget Resolution Apparently Will Have Little New Money for Student Aid and Will Seek Cuts in Loan Programs." \nUnfortunately, for all of us at real colleges, there's not enough money to keep a student-aid amendment to the budget that called for an increase in Pell Grants and other federal grants and loans for college students earning actual degrees from accredited institutions. Instead, the lawmakers who help draft the federal budget will give an unaccredited, non-degree-granting, 37-person Bible study $1 million.\nA group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation sees the madness in this scenario. The organization has sued the education department, and the group's co-president correctly identified it as "religious pork." \nIt's also a waste of money. Who knows how the money is being used? The million-plus bucks ought to be helping students who are pursuing recognized degrees at recognized schools -- goodness knows, they need it.\nEveryone and anyone is welcome to study the Bible or any other religious text. But using it as a pretense to snooker taxpayers out of a lot of money is shameful. \nThere are immense global and national challenges both in the future and in the present. Resolving these issues to help humanity requires all of our citizens to have the best education possible.\nThe federal government should provide much more help to college students so our workforce will be the most prepared and innovative in the world. But that won't happen satisfactorily without generous government aid to fund the basis of economic development, education. \nIt's terribly ironic that we are spending money on an unaccredited "college" but failing to give needy students the opportunity to get a college degree.\nShame on the Department of Education, shame on our lawmakers who allowed this to happen and shame on us if we don't demand better of our government and country. \nFor the future, in the future, we must rise to meet the need of genuine education, and certainly not fund unaccredited institutions that don't even confer degrees.