Ballot Measure 86 has a feel-good quality to it that makes opposing it difficult. Sending kids to college is part of the American dream, after all, and in this day and age it’s a mighty expensive one. But this legislative referral, championed by state Treasurer Ted Wheeler, is not the way to go about making college affordable to all.

Measure 86, if approved, would amend the state constitution to require the Legislature to set up the Oregon Student Opportunity (scholarship) Fund and then allow it to sell bonds to fill that fund. The bonds would be backed by the full faith, credit and taxing power of the state, meaning every taxpaying Oregonian would be on the hook if the state could not, for some reason, pay back what it had borrowed.

It’s the wrong approach to a real problem.

College is expensive. In Oregon, a student at a four-year public school spent $8,605, on average, in tuition and fees last year, according to the College Board. That places Oregon as the 25th-most expensive among the 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and well below such places as New Hampshire, Delaware and even Washington.

Meanwhile, a student at a public two-year school in Oregon spent about half that, $4,441, on average. That makes Oregon’s community colleges the seventh-most expensive in the same group.

Wheeler, the measure’s most vocal supporter, notes that Measure 86 does not require the Legislature to sell bonds, though the notion that it will refrain from doing so is far-fetched, at best. And, although the fund would be generally off-limits, the measure includes language that would allow lawmakers to tap it under certain conditions.

If the state’s Opportunity Fund needs to grow, there’s a better approach. The Legislature can, as it weighs the financial needs of various parts of state government, set aside money for the fund. It can encourage private donors to give to the fund, as well.

The fund might grow more slowly that way, to be sure. But payback in that case would not depend on an ever-stronger stock market to avoid serious financial problems down the road.