High school seniors across America are getting their diplomas. But it looks like many of them won't be able to afford college.
Eighty percent of young Americans who go to college attend a state-supported institution. For the children of working families that can't afford sky-high private tuitions, state universities and colleges are the ladders to good jobs.
But cash-starved states -- forced to balance their budgets -- are cutting the public higher education to ribbons. The University of California, once the jewel in the crown of public higher education, has to cut its budget $170 million this year. At the University of Texas, 10 percent of state aid is gone.The University of North Carolina has to slice $260 from its budget. Here in Massachusetts, there's an attempt to privatize most of the state university system.
So it goes, all across America. The immediate result? State colleges and universities are jacking up tuitions, some by more than 20 percent.
This couldn't come at a worse time. Manufacturing jobs that used to provide high-school graduates decent wages are disappearing at a breakneck pace, makinga college education all the more important. But working families who are already taking it on the chin in this recession can barely afford to send the kids to college as it is.
Meanwhile, higher education is about to experience another great demographic wave. The number of America high school graduates is growing rapidly, and not peaking until around 2009.
The reality is we all lose when fewer Americans can attend college.
So-called "supply siders" say our future economic growth depends ongiving tax breaks to people with higher incomes, so they'll turn around and invest their savings in new factories and equipment. But those factories and equipment couldas easily be built outside America as inside. In the global economy, physical and financial capital are footloose. They go wherever they can get the highest return.
The truth is that the only resource that's uniquely American is our "humancapital" -- our people, their capacity to think, and to identify and solveproblems. That's why America's future productivity depends uniquely on our brains. And if we're not nurturing them -- if we're cutting back on education-- we're failing to make the most important investment in our future.
Instead of cutting taxes on the wealthy, we'll grow faster if we use the money to give more Americans a better education.