Today was a hectic day to say the least. I have been up for close to 48 hours after pulling an all nighter last night in an attempt to catch up on all the reading for my Business Law exam today. Since it’s an online course, I had to take the written exam with a test proctor who was convieniently working two hours away. The one thing I love about long drives is the rare opportunity to just think. No distractions, just pure, unadulterated thoughts. I began thinking about politics, our nation, and the world, as is often the case. When I approach politics, I try and brainstorm very unconventional ideas that fall outside of the norm, but all the while still appear not only feasible, but effective as well. The reason for this out of the box approach is my unwavering opinion that our current policies and schools of thought are simply driving this nation in the opposite direction that we want to be moving.
Over the last few decades, although it has been a trend of the century as a whole also, America has dug itself a hole. We are too deep in debt to ever overcome it, and we consistently run a deficit in everything. We continue to spend massive amounts of money on Medicare, the military, the prison system, environmental research, and just about anything else under the sun, but yet we still perform below expectations in each of those categories. So how is it that we consistently perform poorly when we have that much government funding being pumped in? Some would say that they are not receiving enough funding. Even if this were the case, we can’t afford to push more money into these areas. My personal opinion is that we are inefficient. Money is being wasted on research when there are other alternatives.
My proposal is simple, and though it may seem biased because of my demographic as a college student, I promise I will stand by this even 40 years into the future. In order to improve our economy and society as a whole, our colleges need to be completely overhauled. Right now, college is costing the average student somewhere around $5,000 a year. This figure is inflated massively in the North East, where private schools are averaging $40,000. As an out of state student at Penn State, I am paying about $20,000 a year, not counting the extra $5,000-$10,000 in room, board, and living expenses. I think it’s safe to say that college is outrageously priced. While the price tag does not discourage many students from attending college, it does affect the distribution of majors and what careers these graduates go into. If you are planning on being close to $200,000 dollars in debt after college and grad school, you aren’t likely to choose a career path that is going to make you $50,000 a year. The number of students going into law, medicine, and business are skyrocketing while we lose valuable brain power that could be going into the research fields that can’t compete salary-wise. The proportion of students who go into environmental sciences and research global warming and new sources of fuel are going to be vastly outnumbered by high paid white collar workers.
It is my theory that by improving the affordability of colleges, we will improve the efficiency of every aspect of our society. I don’t think anyone will argue with the fact that educated populations are always more advanced and generally more successful than those with poor educational institutions. Instead of becoming doctors, students could afford to pay off their loans easily by working a lower paying medical research position if they were only maybe $40,000 in debt after grad school. These increase in medical research would lead to an increase in the quality of medical technology and care. The same applies to the environmental fields.
The major question here is how do we decrease the price of college so drastically for each student. Even if you disagree with my theory, you probably at least agree that the cost of college is getting out of hand. I don”t have an answer to the funding question, but I do have an approach. Two years ago, my high school law class took a visit to Rahway Prison in Northern New Jersey. On that visit, we were given a quick lesson on the history of facility. While it is not the case anymore, Rahway had been a self-sufficient prison for most of its life span. They funded the prision by having a world class wood shop, as well as operating a laundry service for 3 other prisons. Those prisons would ship their laundry to Rahway and the prison would charge for the service. Of course, they also rented out inmate labor to construction projects and other various tasks. What if we were somehow able to apply this concept of self-sufficiency to universities. I realize to think along the lines of renting out labor, since colleges are a bit different from prisons (massive understatement), but the might just be a way to create programs that carried a very large chunk of the college budget. In order to kick-start these self-sufficiency programs, perhaps the new trend of states selling their toll roads to private companies would allow the states to put a billion or so into their respective state universities. We should also skim a bit of the budget off other areas, like the ones mentioned before, in order to improve them this way.
The underlying premise is that knowledge is power. With a more educated workforce, our research would create cheaper alternatives thus relieving the budget. It would take creativity to lower college costs, but perhaps it really is possible. If the universities become successful enough in their self-sufficiency programs, they would fund their own research into the various issues we are so concerned about, effectively eliminating the need for much of the government research funding.
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