Average tuition and fees at the nation’s public universities jumped up, again, above inflation and far above average wage increases, to over $17,000. Average family incomes are in the $50,000 range. A family earning that much can’t afford to send one child to a state university.
A college education shouldn’t be a luxury, President Obama said at the University of Michigan on Friday. Young men and women who want a university education should not be told, “no, your family isn’t rich enough to give you that opportunity.”
Neither, in this wealthiest of nations, should students be forced to borrow tens of thousands of dollars and be dumped into the “real world” at graduation shouldering a huge burden of debt.
Last Thursday noon Chris Stockebrand, manager of the Woodson County Co-op, told Iola Rotarians the public universities in Spain — where he worked for Cargill for a while — are “free,” just as are their elementary and secondary schools. “It is a right that every Spanish student has,” he said.
Spain is not unusual in this regard. Many European nations have recognized that the level of education required to compete in today’s world economy has risen. Today, a university degree is as necessary to rise to the top as a high school degree was a couple of generations ago.
To be sure, it is not easy to get into a top flight university in France, Germany or a Scandanavian country. Students aiming at a university degree must first succeed in a pre-university high school curriculum substantially more difficult than is required in the U.S. But once accepted, they are never forced to drop out because of tuition, fees or living expenses.
Obama wasn’t so ambitious in his Michigan remarks. He only jawboned university officials to stop raising tuition to make up for legislators and governors who would rather cut taxes for their wealthier citizens than appropriate enough money for their universities so tuitions can be reduced rather than increased, fees can be eliminated and living costs subsidized.
Kansas is a prime example of this beggar-the-poor philosophy.
IT’S A MATTER of values. At this time in the history of the human race, modern societies should consider providing an excellent education for its citizens to be as essential to a nation’s welfare as national defense, public health, highways and other transportation basics, and national parks.
These are just some of the things modern, wealthy nations, such as the U.S. of A., do for their citizens. They should be considered core American values.
An education that stops at high school doesn’t cut it today. A system that denies a higher education to those who can’t afford it weakens society in general and condemns its poorer people to continued poverty. Such a system should be labeled un-American.
The subject is class warfare — the haves against the have-nots. The haves think they keep winning because God wants them to. Why can’t they see it’s because they have all the bullets?
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
