[I'm trying something new here: writing a blog entry directly from the iPhone using the WordPress application. I tried this once before and lost what I wrote (one hopes due to operator error!) so I'll try to be brief.]
There has been a lot of talk about how American students are not being prepared to compete in the global economy and, unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to that. There’s no single reason for this, but the different issues or problems are not entirely unrelated.
Let’s start out with something simple. My parents always emphasized to me that a college education was essential to being successful in life (at least insofar as such mundane details as earning a living go). Fortunately for me, I was a good student and was motivated to go to school (the University of California at Santa Cruz). In addition, back in the 1980′s, the University of California was much more affordable than it is today, at least for a family of modest means. It’s easy to forget that a college education (and I’m not just thinking of major universities here!) is a significant financial sacrifice. It is not uncommon for students to work longer hours than they really ought to, and still incure significant debts. It’s easy to write this all off as the “cost” of a college education. Should we?
At one time, it was expected that one need only stay in school, earn a high school diploma, get a job, marry and raise a family. We all know, on some level, that this just isn’t practical any more. Yet it remains part of the American myth. We want to believe it. Maybe we even have to, on some level.
Leaving aside the question of whether everyone should go to college, let’s consider what would be reasonable for us as a society to do if it really is essential. We have concluded that certain things are really essential to a functioning society: clean air, clean water, a power grid, telecommunications (including telephone and data services), transportation infrastructure, police and fire services, and more. Without these basic services, society as we know it simply could not function. Accordingly, we have come to regard making these basic services available at a reasonable cost part of our basic social contract. So far, so good.
But what about education? Isn’t an educated workforce essential to a functioning society? Does it not follow that we ought to make education available to all as part of our basic social contract? Alas, no. Yes, we do have public schools and, in principle, shouldn’t the public school system make a high school education available to any child? Well, that’s the idea, but in today’s world, we are increasingly coming to find that high school is just not enough. If nothing else, the increasing importance of technology even in very basic jobs is a good reason for this. The rate of technological transition is another important factor: we just can’t reasonably expect to do the same work throughout our careers.
Now, people have recognized this for a number of years, and we’ve long had systems of public colleges and universities. Except…except that schools like the University of California are no longer affordable. Against all reason, we’ve once again come to regard higher education as a luxury item, and jobs are increasingly being outsourced to other countries. It’s easy to blame “cheap labor” but is that really the problem? Or is it that we’ve been negligent at the public policy level by not supporting the level of educational infrastructure our society needs to function?
I leave this question as an exercise to the reader.
[...] and the Economy, part 2 | Sep 28th 2009 In a recent blog entry, I argued that affordable post-secondary education is vital to a healthy economy. It is also [...]
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