Prison vs. Harvard in an unlikely debate

This isn't far off from how the Putnam competition started: In 1933, five years before it launched as an annual competition between universities, the first Putnam mathematics competition was held between Harvard and the United States Military Academy. Allegedly nobody thought the Army had much of a chance, but unlike the students from Harvard they took the competition seriously, and as in this latest competition the underdogs won.

I was expecting to read about a debate on the relative merits of going to prison, or to Harvard.

"Republican politicians () argued that many law-abiding families struggled to afford college and shouldn’t have pay for convicted criminals to get degrees"- while this opinion has merit, it shows again Republicans have no compassion, it's a paradox that many called themselves Christian when in the Bible Jesus explicitly commanded to help the imprisoned.