Killing Off the American Future, NY Times Editorial, 9/16/2006

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/opinion/16sat3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin">Killing Off the American Future, NY Times Editorial, 9/16/2006



America’s domination of the global information economy did not come about by accident. It flowed directly from policies that allowed the largest generation in the nation’s history broad access to a first-rate college education regardless of ability to pay. By subsidizing public universities to keep tuition low, and providing federal tuition aid to poor and working-class students, this country vaulted tens of millions of people into the middle class while building the best-educated work force in the world.

Those farsighted policies, however, are a thing of the past. Cuts in college aid and soaring tuition at state colleges have made it difficult for young people to educate themselves at a time when a college degree has become the basic price of admission to both the middle class and the global economy.

The warning about American vulnerability, which has been sounded in several reports of late, was underscored yet again in a study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a nonpartisan research organization. The report highlights some ominous trends. As the well-schooled boomers march off into retirement, the generation that replaces them is shaping up to be less educated by far. No longer the world leader in terms of the proportion of young people enrolled in college, the country now ranks 16th among the 27 nations examined when it comes to the proportion of college students who complete college degrees or certificate programs.

When judged in terms of college affordability, 43 American states are given F’s in the new report. In addition to disinvesting in higher education, the states — and the colleges themselves — have shifted aid once aimed at the poor students to the middle and upper income levels. They are essentially following the lead of the federal government, which has adopted the same strategy, while failing to sustain its commitment to poor students who once could have attended college on the Pell Grant program alone.

Unless America renews its commitment to the higher education policies that made the country great, we could soon find ourselves at the mercy of an increasingly competitive global economy. And if we let ourselves hit bottom, it could take generations for us to dig ourselves out.

This is a serious problem --- and between the consequences of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy, the Bush-Cheney stands on international humanitarian law, the Bush-Cheney stans on science (See, e.g., Mooney, The Republican War On Science), and our Pre K-12, and higher education policies --- we are on the way to deep doo-doo - if not already there.