A federal law denying student aid to people convicted of drug crimes has taught a valuable lesson to hundreds of thousands of American college students: It’s better to lie than to be honest about your drug offenses on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. That’s the key message from the Education Department’s release this week of data on the number of students affected by the 1998 law, according to an article today on Slate.

The data were requested by Students for Sensible Drug Policy, an advocacy group that had sought the numbers to help its campaign to repeal the law (The Chronicle, January 27), which even its author regarded as flawed (The Chronicle, April 5, 2002). The department initially demanded a large processing fee for the data, but then backed down under threat of a lawsuit (The Chronicle, March 28). Meanwhile, various groups sued to overturn the law itself (The Chronicle, March 23).

According to the data, about 190,000 students told the truth about their drug convictions and were denied financial aid as a result. But nearly 300,000 students simply ignored the question—and got their aid.