Where does a high school diploma get you today? The answer, as most of us already know, is just about nowhere. A hundred years ago, a high school education was all that most people needed to find a job and start building a successful career. As times have changed however, so have societies requirements for the educational level of its citizens. The world we live in today is radically more complex than the world our predecessors lived in a century ago. We are advancing our technology at exponential rates. Jobs that didn’t even exist 10 years ago are now some of the most in demand jobs today, and many of those jobs may not even exist ten years from now. With the increased complexity and pace of our society comes an increased demand for an increasingly skilled labor force. “It is very clear from our survey of employers that higher education needs to increase not only the numbers of students who graduate, but the levels of learning they obtain in college” (aacu.org). Where once a high school diploma could land you into a successful career, now you must have a College degree. In 1910 the percentage of Americans with four or more years of college was 2.7%. By 2007 that number had increased to a staggering 28.7% of people, that is more than a tenfold increase in the past hundred years (Infoplease.com) . It is obvious that education has become increasingly important to us as individuals, and as a society; that is why we must as a provide our citizens with an equally accessible college education system. This system would have the benefit of creating a more happy and productive populace, as well as preparing our country for the future that lies ahead.
Education is highly valued in our culture; we know this because we are all brought up learning about the importance of education. It is drilled into our heads from the very moment we can comprehend that one day we will be adults. So why do so many people still enter the workforce with minimal or no higher education under their belts? Some would say that it is a result of laziness or lack of intelligence; but what if it is not so much these factors as it is the factor of cost and availability? Should our society really hold individuals back from attaining an education because they are poor, or don’t want to incur large amounts of debt? According to a recent survey almost 42 percent of people who do not attended college do not do so because of issues related to cost (ous.edu). Education and attaining knowledge are the crowing achievements of our species, and helping to provide an equally accessible program for college education to all citizens (regardless of income) will increase our societies overall health and productivity. Education is a worthwhile investment that will benefit individuals as well as helping to create a productive and more sustainable economy.
So why not college? What reasons are behind limiting a person’s educational opportunities, and thus eliminating their ability to become a productive and happy member of society? The answer is cost, as it usually seems to be . The cost of college today is becoming increasingly expensive at a rate faster than the average income is increasing. According to the L.A. Times, the price of college tuition has gone up by almost 50% in the last decade, drastically outpacing the rate of inflation.
As you can see these cost increases are steadily on the rise, making it harder for middle and low income individuals to attend a four year university, or anything beyond that without taking out loans and incurring large amounts of debt. Consider that when applying for a student loan students receive both subsidized (government) and unsubsidized (private) loans for their schooling, and on average the private loans interest rates are at least 1.5 percent higher than the subsidized loans (finaid.org). The problem with the system of student loans in our country is that it effectively saddles hardworking students with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, affecting them for years after their schooling is completed and perhaps even effecting some peoples decision to attend school altogether; all this in the name of profit. this transitions nicely into one of the main objections to implementing a publicly funded higher education system for the citizens of our country. One of the main arguments against implementing such a system is that doing so would unfairly tax persons who are not benefiting from it, or who do not want to pay into it. according to some fiscal conservatives implementing a system such as this would undermine our capitalist society, and help to further perpetuate a unmotivated populace by creating a welfare state, and that allowing people to seek out and buy their education at choice is actually keeping them more free (reasonforliberty.com).
This argument might seem to have some bite to it at first glance, but there are already a plethora of publicly funded programs that we all pay into as citizens of the united states: Police, roads, libraries, social security, and schools(elementary, middle, and High) are just some of the publicly funded programs that we all and benefit from.
Another problem with the idea of a privatized and for profit education system is that when you start trying to run a school system like a corporation – you will effectively attempt to maximize profit and minimize costs; two things that would drastically reduce the quality of education for attendees. Here is a passage from noted public speaker Noam Chomsky on the subject:
The method has been to raise the entrance standards for the state colleges without improving the schools. So when you don’t improve the schools but you raise the entrance standards for the people who are trying to go on, it’s kinds of obvious what happens. You get lower enrollments, and when you get lower enrollments, you’ve got to cut staff because, remember, we have to be efficient, like corporations. So you cut staff, and you cut services, and then you can admit even fewer people, and there’s kind of a natural cycle, and you can see where it ends up. It ends up with people either not going to college or figuring out some way to spend $30,000 a year at a private college…( scepsis.edu)
Another, among the important reasons for providing equal education opportunities for all is the impact that such educational opportunities would have on an individual citizens income, productivity, and health. Maximizing the number of persons with a college education in our society would greatly benefit it, as it would mean there would be less poverty and greater overall societal health.
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Consider that there is a clear correlation between the education level of a particular person and their average income, as seen in this graph : Fig. 1. This graph shows the correlation between Income, unemployment, and education level.
(Beureu of Labor Statisitics)
Now if a person’s income is affected so drastically by their education level then it would follow that a person’s ability to buy goods and services is also affected by their education level. Higher educational level means more purchasing power — more purchasing power means more stimulation for an economy.
Now purchasing power is not the only reason to provide citizens with a higher education; there is also the issue of individual health to consider as well. Several studies now show that there is yet another positive correlation between education level and health. Specifically, the lower the education level the lower the overall averse health, and vice versa:
Education, not income or race, is the most important indicator of life span and health during old age, according to researchers, the New York Times reports. According to James Smith, a health economist for RAND, and other researchers, studies have found a link between a few additional years of education and longer life spans and large improvements in health during old age… (Medicalnewstoday.com)
This means that the more education a person has, the healthier a lifestyle they are likely to live. Now this in itself is great news for equal education, but also consider this: There is a staggering amount of lost productivity in society today that results from missing work due to illness, and poor health. By some accounts lost work days due to illness account for as much as $63 billion a year (Entrepreneur). So from this information we can see that there is a tremendous amount of lost income and productivity due to illness in our society; and helping citizens to be more healthy by providing them with a better education (which has been shown to increase overall health) would have the effect of reducing lost profit and productivity.
Now, a more healthy and productive workforce is obviously beneficial to society, but some people would argue that in providing a universal education system would degrade the quality of education that is currently available to students — much like the No Child Left Behind Act had the effect of enacting unreasonable educational standards upon public schools that the schools were then bound to abide by in order to receive funding(Nea.org). Would not creating an open and publicly funded education program do the same? The answer to that question is a resounding no. In order to ensure the quality of college education for all students the government would not be directly involved in the educational process or the curriculum for these institutions. Rather, they would provide a college stipend to all students (much like today’s Pell grant, but with no income requirements) allowing students to effectively choose the schools that they wish to attend based on their educational needs. This would also ensure that schools would not lower their educational standards nor entrance criteria, but rather allow more students who may have met the academic but not financial criteria to attend. This type of system has been implemented with great success in several countries throughout the world including Sweden, France, and Norway. This type of public funding helps to keep the quality of education high and the choice about the education curriculum in the hands of the educators, ensuring a quality education for all who attend.
Education has also helped uplift our society in the past. Before public school systems were created and attendance made compulsory in the United States, the literacy rate for our country hovered around 80%. Since the implementation of these systems, the literacy rates in our country are now nearly 100 percent (Nces.gov). If we can attain a nearly 100 percent level of literacy by providing public primary education for our citizens imagine what we can do for our country if we provide a publicly funded college education for every citizen in our country, or every person in the world for that matter. What if there is a person out there who has the next great idea locked away in his/her brain? What if the next great scientific leap in human history is lost because someone with the ability to create something spectacular was never given access to the cognitive tools that they needed to build and compile their knowledge? By limiting access to education we are effectively stunting our potential as a species. If you are only as strong as your weakest link, then by giving every person access to these tools we are helping to make our entire species stronger . This investment in higher education must be made, as it will allow us as a society to keep up with the fast paced and highly technological world around us and continue to contribute to it. Providing this system is a crucial step in creating a sustainable, happy, healthy, and productive society, and to ignore the importance of education will leave us lagging behind those that chose to provide their citizens with the most valuable tool that exists: knowledge.
