And I’m not talking about new building projects such as the Bell Museum, though such projects certainly are shovel ready as well.
I’m speaking about the simple fact that funding higher education, mainly by funding students, is one of the best possible ways to stimulate the economy.
The American workforce is under educated and under trained. This is almost always true to some extent, but in times when the centers of gravity in industry and business are shifting, it becomes even more true. The simple fact that the nature of the job market has changed dramatically over the last 20 years demands that we attend to this knowledge and training deficit. A couple of decades ago, we were a society in which most individuals in the workforce trained-up and learned-up for a career, engaged in the career, moved along, or up, in that career, and retired. Now, people often change careers a number of times, for good reasons and not because of any lack on their part. The old fogeys who run things include a lot of pre-transition lifers who do not viscerally understand this new dynamic. But these out-going power brokers are … well, outgoing. Or they are beginning to understand that the new normative career path is a zig zag for almost everyone.
Even without this change the American workforce is poorly educated compared to the European workforce. We are poorly educated compared to the Cuban workforce. Let’s not even talk about Canada and Japan.
So we need more education, and President Obama recognizes this, and during his Big Speech before the Joint Session of Congress said so. He told us that four years of high school is not sufficient for a patriotic American. We need to add to this a minimum of one year of college.
(I love the new patriotism!)
If I was the owner of a road construction company, and stimulus packages were being run through the legislative process in Washington, and the President called a Joint Session of Congress and announced that we would be adding one lane to every road in the nation …. (think about that for a second) … I’d be doing certain things.
I would not be cutting staff. Which is what some universities and colleges are doing. I would not be freezing hires. I would not be raising the cost of services at my business. I would not be panicking. All these are things we are seeing in higher education in one form or another, and it does not make a lot of sense.
Granted, if you live in a state with a history of Republican control, you have no way of knowing if the stimulus money distributed through the states will get to higher ed, because Republicans have long recognized that there is a correlation between education level and liberalism, and thus, they are afraid of education. Granted, if you are a private university that runs on endowments, then you are hopelessly lost in the quagmire that is the free market (during doldrums … to stir my aqueous metaphors). But don’t worry, your endowments will be kicking ass in a few year’s and you’ll own the world again.
But if you are a public university in an “Education State” with a populous supportive of education and a legislature that is not too dumbed down, it is time to paint the waiting room, start finding some extra classroom space, and run a sale on your services.
And most important, crank up the lobbyists and the grassroots power base that you presumably have been cultivating over the last twenty years or so in preparation for this sort of revolutionary eventuality.
(You have been working on that power base thing, right?)
There is some increase available in Pell grants. There is some retraining money that can go for tuition (this has been available for some time). But you will need to go to Washington and get more, because it is worth it. There are states and regions where education is such a big industry that stimultion in this sector alone can alleviate unemployment and enhance the local economy measurably.
And every new customer you get is equal to one or more new customers in every subsequent generation. Parents with college degrees want their children to have college degrees. The best long term investment a University or College can make is in a first-generation scholar. But only if it is done well.
We are higher education and we are shovel ready.
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Are we talking about publicly funding the first year’s tuition for everyone that wants it? Because if we are, that’s amazingly awesome. That would be the biggest thing since the GI bill, or bigger even. It would be a huge gain to the middle class.
Downside is it would probably mean the dumbing down of a lot of first year courses. Which are often already pretty dumbed. I may be out of line on that assertion.
I have a better idea : How about kids go to grade school for 4 extra weeks a year, like they do in most other industrialized countries?
4 weeks x 12 grades = 48 extra weeks of school > 1 year (30 weeks?) of college.
My idea is better than Mr Presidents because the kids will be in school while their brains are still fresh enough to actually learn something.
That’s a great idea! In fact, it’s such a good idea that it’s been law for several years. Extra funds for schools with extended school years have been available for quite some time.
No takers, though …
In any case, the two are not directly related. Getting kids ready for higher education is a Very Good Idea, but isn’t going to do much for the country any time soon. Enabling more people to actually take advantage of higher education is something we can do right now.
Despite my strong libertarian bias, it’s been obvious to me since early 2008 that the misuse of fiat money combined with deregulation (IMO just because regulations are, in the main, bad doesn’t mean that abrupt deregulation is good) has produced a humongous increase in the money supply. (Not the “Mx” that the Fed measures, but the totality of everything that could be used as collateral for loans that could support leverage.) The unwinding of this as 2nd and higher tier derivatives came to be considered unreliable has removed literally hundreds of trillions of dollars from the money supply, which is why nothing can be done to “fix” an economy that requires a pre-2007 sized money supply except for printing hundreds of trillions of dollars and distributing them appropriately.
What better way than on education? Rather than just using borrowed dollars (of which even one trillion would be too much for the economy to stand) to pay a little tuition, or teacher salaries for a few more weeks of school, why not treat getting educated as a government job, paid for by a salary that can be used for self-support (housing, food, car, etc.). This could be true for both adults and children. This in addition to using the freshly printed money to support the institutions that supply that education.
Granted the administrative problems would be enormous, but right now, with the exponentially increasing productivity of labor, solving the problems of “traditional” capitalism ([sarcasm] a long tradition: since the end of WWII [/sarcasm]) will almost certainly (IMO) require as much administrative adjustment.
Even today, steps are being taken to prevent the sort of massive growth of the money supply that took place between 1999 and 2006/2007. If these steps work, then printing and distributing all those trillions of dollars will simply help reconstitute the semi-healthy pre-2007 economy, while failing to do so will force our economy into massive deflation and dislocation (including unemployment).
As for libertarians/free-marketers, they’ll adjust, just as they did to the Fed’s fiat money.
If you support these core initiatives:
-Effective, empowered teachers and school leaders;
-Student assessments that stress 21st century skills;
-Universal access to high-quality early education;
-A safe, healthy learning environment; and
-Affordable college for all students,
Then let President Obama know! Visit EDVOTERS.ORG and sign the petition today!
The science of teaching should be “stimulated.”
How many scientists are in labs advancing the science of teaching at all levels?
Why are we still using books and chalk boards like we did 100 years ago?
Teaching seems relatively untouched by the computer, information and internet revolutions.
Teacher productivity needs to be increased dramatically.
Kill the unions and tenure and let each educator be paid on his or her own merits.
Get the top educators to develop national courses that can be implemented locally via video feeds and computers.
Develop learing pathways for students who are destined for “hands on” jobs that can’t be replaced by global workers.
There are many good ideas out there, but funding hasn’t gotten to the right places in the right quantity.