Use foundation money for no-loan grants

After seeing a small piece on CNN about no-loan grants for working-class families, I asked myself: Why don't we do that here in Iowa?

Iowa Public Radio announced that Iowa college graduates are second in the United States with carrying debt load in comparison to their income upon completion of college. Thank you regents for your vision, not.

There are simply not enough high-paying jobs in the area to cultivate our homegrown talent. I say tap the university foundations for no-loan grants and debt relief for students to stay after college. In theory, the reason the foundation has a privileged tax status is that it provides a value to the community as a whole - education. These accounts are in the hundreds of millions of dollars or more.

Allowing wealthy people to donate large sums to sports programs serves only the institutions and the financial guys constructing the gifts. The foundations should be required to use 10 percent to 20 percent of their gifts for tuition relief through work study.

People want to be memorialized. Unfortunately, this leads to football stadiums being used as vanity plates. The decades of sports studies, feminine studies, film studies, etc., didn't get us to the Rose Bowl either.

Curtis Jasa

Cedar Rapids