U.S. should be at head of the education pack

opinions

July 27, 2010 - 12:00 AM

America needn’t be first in everything. It was OK to lose the World Cup in soccer.
Some competitions, on the other hand, must be won. Being number one in essential things is critical.
For a good many years the United States led the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now, according to the College Board, it ranks 12th among 50 developed nations.
Gaston Caperton, the president of the Board, finds this slippage alarming.
“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” he told a New York Times reporter.
Caperton addressed a meeting in Washington, D.C., of education leaders and policy makers and said:
“To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.”
In a report on U.S. higher education, he said that college completion rates have become a national concern.
A year ago, President Barack Obama launched “The American Graduation Initiative” with a goal of 5 million more U.S. college graduates by 2020, to help the United States again lead the world in educational attainment.
Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, as he become chairman of the National Governors Association, announced that he would lead a graduation-completion initiative. Grantmakers for Education, an organization for those who donate to universities and other education entities, is on the same quest.
“We spend a fortune recruiting freshmen but forget to recruit sophomores,” Michael McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation, remarked wryly.
Just this April, Melinda Gates spoke at the American Association of Community Colleges convention and urged them to lead the way on college completion. She put Gates Foundation money where her mouth was: they would, she pledged, contribute up to $110 million to improve remedial programs in an effort to increase graduation rates.

WHY ARE these top rank leaders focusing so intently on college degrees? Because, over the long haul, the nations with the highest number of college degree holders win all of the other competitions that matter. For example, the United States won the space race, moving up from a lap behind, because it had the brightest engineers and the most of them. The United States won, and still leads, the wealth race because the last two generations of entrepreneurs in this country were the best educated.
Knowledge is power is not just a catchy phrase; it is the central truth of our time.
Mr. Caperton’s admonition that the U.S. needs to “think P-16” is dead on — and applies just as much to Iola and Kansas as it does to the rest of the country.
P-16 — pre-school through four years of higher education — is a prescription that recognizes that a college degree is as important for today’s youth as a high school education was to the upcoming generation of pre-World War II days.
Parents should think P-16. Students should, as well. It is their lives that P-16 power will enrich.
It is particularly important that Americans elect decision makers at the local, state and national levels who are P-16 thinkers dedicated to making the United States No. 1 in education and keeping it there.
But isn’t P-16 an expensive way to go? That depends on one’s perspective. In this competitive world we live in, regaining and then retaining the top spot in the education level of our population is clearly the best investment of our nation’s wealth that can be made. What will be excruciatingly expensive is deciding not to compete — deciding that being in 12th place is cheaper and therefore better.
And, yes, who you vote for on Aug. 3 will matter. Choose the candidate you believe best understands that knowledge is power; who knows that raising the knowledge level of Kansans starts in pre-school and doesn’t stop until college is completed; who knows that pennies spent now on education will turn into dollars for society when today’s youngsters become tomorrow’s producers.
Vote for candidates who know that shortchanging our schools shortchanges our future.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

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