I understand that in terms of the state budget or in relation to the total cost of vaccination, this is an insignificant amount, but in natural numbers it is still significant and despite the planned savings in vaccines, this method of luring the population to vaccination seems immoral and unacceptable to me.
As mentioned by other users, the state government is only providing college scholarships and not cash prizes. So it will be wrong to say that the money is being misspent. Even during normal times, scholarships are given, and this time they are just rebranding it as a lottery. I don't see anything condemnable in this. There is no fund diversion, and no coercion is being used. And many of the other states (including Democrat ruled ones) have started similar schemes for those who are willing to get a dose of the vaccine.
They are indeed making it sounds different but same as you said where everything had been a casual offer in terms of scholarships and similar thing into those normal
days that we had in previous years or in ages and now they are just making to look beneficial for citizens but actually it doesnt really have any difference at all.
Having these kind of set-ups are good initiative but at least they do divide the prize into smaller parts so that lots would really benefit out.
At least their government is taking up some actions or ways on how people to get convinced on taking a shot but it cant really be avoided that people
would always have the doubts.