Continuing the thread on individual responsibility for education.
I read with some difficulty Charles Barclay's opinion that since he was
able to pay his own way through college, everyone should. My initial
response was unprintable, but now that several days have passed I can make
a somewhat rational response.
I respect Charles' right to his opinion, but it hit a raw nerve. There
are many other tales besides his, and I've heard a lot of them in my
previous career as a college administrator (in the financial aid and
student housing areas). Several common themes are: the student's family
needs his or her part-time income to get along (this is also my own
story); there are several children in college at the same time; and
(perhaps the most common), the student does not have the skills to earn
enough money to put him/herself through school and meet living expenses at
the same time. Without financial aid, many (probably most) of these
people would not be able to go to college.
It doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to see that it's in the national
interest to build earnings capacity in young people. A quick look at the
statistics on the earnings potential of college grads vs. high school
grads tells most of the story. If earnings potential correlates with
productivity (we'll leave leadership and the quality of our civilization
out of the picture for the moment, but they're important parts), then the
question is whether the productivity gains are worth the risk of a few bad
investments, represented by students who default on their loans. A number
of studies have been done on this, and (as far as I can recall) they all
point to student financial aid as the cheapest means of building the
resources needed to assure a healthy economy.
I invite Charles to provide evidence that the country would be better off
- in terms of both overall productivity and organizational leadership - if
only those who could pay their own way could go to college. I suspect
that putting his proposal into practice would point us toward the
class-based society we had from 1620 to the 1950's. I, for one, would not
relish that.
-- David E. Birren Phone: (608)267-2442 Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources Fax: (608)267-3579 Bureau of Management & Budget Internet: birred@dnr.state.wi.us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "To know, and not to act, is to not know." --Wang Yang Ming, 9th-century Chinese general