Higher education is facing a crisis nationwide, as state budget cuts and outrageously higher tuition costs are forcing many students to drop out of college, take more years to complete their degrees, and add an overwhelming burden of long term debt through student loans that will predetermine, in many cases, the fields they specialize in for a career.
This is not an issue just of how it affects individuals; it affects the future economic, social, and security interests of the nation!
The Great Recession is undermining the ability of state and local governments to provide the proper education to the eighty or more percent of students who do not have the economic means to attend private universities. If we do not provide moderately priced public higher education, it will lead to many students not fulfilling their intellectual potential. It also will force many students out of comparatively low paying fields, including nursing, teaching, and social work, which desperately need the best, most committed people for the nation’s secure future.
This crisis also weakens the long term knowledge base of millions of students, who often come out of public high schools poorly equipped to deal with the real world, because of a low general knowledge of what they need to know. Having the stress of needing to work multiple jobs to just survive in college makes the ability to learn permanently harmed, and undermines the purpose of college beyond career preparation: intellectual investigation and inquiry.
Unfortunately, the only solution long term is an increase in taxes and aid from the federal government, but that conflicts with the reality of the economy, with millions of people out of work, and millions not able to pay property taxes as their homes are foreclosed.
It also conflicts with the Tea Party Movement, which promotes cuts in taxes and cuts in government spending, an impossible scenario as that only promotes long term inferiority educationally in all of the states. It is the right wing, conservative willingness to back constant deficit spending for wars, and deregulation of the economy that has led to this horrific Great Recession.
If we have the Tea Party Movement succeed this fall, the situation educationally will only worsen dramatically, as their complaints, and solutions of the crisis we are in will only create further chaos and anarchy, which may just be their purpose ultimately! 