Inmates get a free college ride while we pay

Rebecca Bowling

Date published: 5/29/2006

I am glad to see that someone shares my opinion. When I read the article about Coffeewood Correctional Center inmates getting their degrees, I had the same thoughts as letter-writer Beth Parker ["Is the inmates' college program fair?" May 25].

I work full time, and out of my paycheck come tax dollars that pay for programs like this one.

The irony is that while being a full-time employee, wife, and mother of three I also go to college--but in the end I am strapped with a huge debt in student loans.

It is a struggle every day to handle it all.

The point further hit home when on the same page of the paper there was an article about raising tuition rates at the University of Mary Washington.

I am sure the inmates did not feel the pain of any tuition increases.

I understand that the object of this facility is to reform the inmates and that a college degree will help them to make a change in their lives, but it just doesn't seem fair to those of us who have to juggle it all and then pay for it in the end.

If I become valedictorian of my class, will my picture be in the paper?

Or is that not newsworthy because I do the right thing and am not in jail?

Spotsylvania

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Date published: 5/29/2006