In Tuesday’s edition of Pipe Dream, Shelby Wilson argued in her debut column that students receiving financial aid should be drug tested. This argument is lacking in several important areas, namely the practical costs of implementation, the differences between working a job and being a student, the efficacy of such a program and most importantly, what it would achieve.
First, there is the obvious difference in the population between an individual business and even the smallest private colleges — something Binghamton University certainly is not.
At the average work place, anywhere from 50 to 300 employees could routinely go to work, so it is much easier to test the whole population. At Binghamton, thousands of students receive some sort of government-funded aid, and thus, according to Wilson’s proposal, these thousands would need to be tested.
For a private business to test all of its prospective employees is a choice they make in the pursuit of selecting hardworking applicants. At Binghamton, the cost of testing students who have already proven themselves academically worthy of attending the institution would be vast and time consuming.
Factor in the cost of all the drug tests, the additional employees who would need to be hired or the extra payment that would be doled out to those already employed. Then consider the time it would take for all those students to trek down to Events Center or their community building, consolidate them and test them, and it becomes staggering.
Measure up the costs of drug testing thousands next to the cost of drug enforcement — which consists mostly of paying police officers who need to be on campus regardless — and it becomes a gross misappropriation of already scarce public funds.
There are several fundamental and obvious differences between the objectives and costs of a business and a university. A business’ goal is to make money. Thus, both before hiring and throughout an individual’s employment, it is in the interest of the employer to ensure each of his or her workers is in top shape and risk-free. A drop in a worker’s motivation means a drop in that business’ profits.
At a college, the opposite is true. Teachers work for the school, but essentially work for the students, endeavoring to yield the income of a solid education to his or her pupils. And the student works for himself. If one chooses to engage in drug use to the point that it hurts his academic performance, he cuts his overall educational income, and thus his future. The cost resides solely with the student.
So really, the most important difference is in who bears the cost of drug use. A business has an interest in making sure its employees stay drug-free; a university only has to ensure it retains students, which brings me to the most resounding point.
Businesses need to actively enforce a drug-free environment. Students receive financial aid because they achieved the grades necessary to get into school, but could not pay the excessive costs of enrollment. They retain that financial aid as long as they maintain the necessary grades. If they slip below the minimum grade point average required to attend school, they are no longer allowed to attend.
In that way, drug policy at universities are self-enforcing. For a school to undertake the cost of drug testing every student who receives aid is redundant and unnecessary. It makes zero ethical or practical sense.