Making college more affordable can only be one piece of a very complex puzzle. And for the record, given that an education is a permanent asset, even in the face of an economic downturn any investment in education always yields benefits. So while I agree that it may be painful (and I speak from personal experience here), I emphatically disagree with any assertion that it “doesn't do much good to rack up $100K in student loans to pay for your education”. Some days it may feel that way, but that’s just weariness talking.
There seem to be two problems here. First, this developed nation may have forgotten that there are costs involved in development. Second, we may have forgotten that development is a journey not a destination.
In the developing world, it is widely accepted that there are costs to be borne if nations wish to catch up with the rest of the world. In the developing world, we often cringe at the price tags to do any major infrastructural development, but we accept at some level that there are few choices. ‘Do’ and compete; ‘don’t’ and languish at the back of the pack. And so sometimes we ‘do’ and sometimes we ‘don’t’, but in all things we understand that each choice brings with it certain consequences. What this country may not have realized or may perhaps have forgotten, is that there are also costs to be incurred if a nation is to stay ahead or keep abreast of the rest of the developed world – that’s the ‘journey’ part of the development equation. Both the choices and the consequences are the same: ‘do’ and stay abreast or ahead; ‘don’t’ and fall behind.
Among developed nations, the US ranks 15th out of 29 OECD nations in Reading Literacy, arguably the bedrock of all academic pursuits. The US ranks 21st out of 30 nations in Scientific Literacy, arguably a critical skill for any innovation this millennium. The US ranks 25th out of 30 in Mathematics Literacy and 24th out of 29 in Problem Solving. Given that there are problems aplenty to be solved, I don’t imagine that that ranking is going to yield the best outcome for this country. In addition, the report by the Alliance for Excellent Education (March 2008) (link provided below) goes on to say that “[h]alf of American students fell below the threshold of problem-solving skills considered necessary to meet emerging workforce demands (OECD 2004)”. When you look at this legislation through the prism of the ‘emerging workforce demands’ and the economic consequences of not meeting those demands, maybe we would do well to ask what else needs to be done?
Some may feel that making Federal Government loans available to prospective students is tantamount to “throwing money out the window” but nothing I think, could be further from the truth. One of the most important investments a nation can make is in the intellectual capacity of its citizenry. What we need is to address the educational achievement of US students at all levels: attack quality at the K-12 level and accessibility at the tertiary level.
http://www.all4ed.org/files/IntlComp_FactSheet.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/education/10educ.html
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