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Every child left behind

Adam LaMascus
The Commuter

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The youth of the United States find themselves in something of a catch-22. We live in a society where a college degree is needed for a rather sizable amount of jobs, even ones where the knowledge you acquire wouldn’t really help you. However, we also find ourselves in an economic recession, and of course, the US government is cutting costs. Ever wise, they of course slash budgets to education before just about anything else. This of course results in a general decrease of education, and a decrease of available classes. In turn, this causes the costs of school to go up, while receiving an inferior quality of education.

Unfortunately, another side effect of the recession is, of course, people losing their jobs. Enrollment rates, at community colleges in particular, have skyrocketed as people go back to school, since they can’t get jobs. As mentioned before, there are fewer classes available, so there is increased competition, and increased amounts of people unable to get classes. A friend of mine at Cal Poly Pomona was unable to get a single class this semester because there weren’t enough classes in his department for all of the students. Also, since people are losing their jobs, they are finding themselves unable to afford the new, much higher tuition costs (take a look at LBCC’s tuition last year and now, for an example that directly affects us).

The next step in this little merry-go-round of misery (would that be a misery-go-round?) is that with people unable to afford school due to loss of jobs, they have to take out loans and grants. However, the limited funds for the federal loans and grants aren’t enough to cover all of the people as it is, let alone with the additional thousands of students . The other big option is private loans from banks. So now, people who are broke because they lost their jobs due to a financial crisis largely created by unreliable banks must give their meager savings back to the banks that caused the problem in the first place.

Lastly, and not least, there is the fact that people are often saddled with debt for decades after graduating college due to school loans. They need degrees to get the jobs that really give you the option of paying them off, but you aren’t guaranteed them even if you do get a degree.

The point I am trying to make here is that while we argue about health care (which we do desperately need to reform), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, gay rights, and the other host of topics frequently discussed in the public forum, we are neglecting education. Our schools are being given attention, just not enough.

Admittedly, the US spends more money than almost any other country on education, but we still lag behind many other developed nations in the quality of education. So, with all of our spending, we have mediocre education, and yet we cut it. Our educational system needs to spend smarter, and not have its costs cut. In the end, we need to reform education just as much, if not more, than we need to reform health care.

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