Karita Hummer's Silver Pen Award
"College Should Be For Everyone"
by Ashiqul Saiyed
reposted from John Edwards blog
http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/9/14/134232/093#13
user icon asaiyed777 in Arguments & Analyses Feed of
9/14/2007 at 5:11 PM EST
One argued that college should not be for everyone as there are not enough white-collar jobs. Moreover, if everyone goes to college, then there will be more college debts and less people would be willing to take on the blue-collar jobs that need to be done. So, his point was universal higher education in America will lead to a labor shortage in the sector of blue-collar jobs.
Wonderful! Had it been so, we would have had a great deal of our problems solved. We would have had most white-collar jobs filled my American-born and most blue-collar jobs filled by immigrant laborers who would be gladly willing to fill in the blue-collar jobs. My point is college education in the United States should be universal and it is possible if college tuitions are damn cheap.
If college tuitions were cheap, then one would not mind going for blue-collar jobs in case of unavailability of white-collar jobs for the time being with the consolation of having attained personal enrichment from college. Moreover our American college graduates could go overseas just as foreign college graduates come to our country with H-1 visas.
We pay way too high for college tuition. For example, in Bangladesh, a poor country with per capita annual income less than $400.00, college tuition costs about 2 dollars a month, room and board cost about less than $30.00 a month. Education is highly subsidized in Bangladesh. This means more college graduates there and more jobs are going there from here. And now you see ad on TV for education loan up to $ 40,000.00 and you don't have to pay until you graduate. Can't they say: "You would not have to start paying back until you land on a white-collar job and keep paying as long as you have that"? May be people are not falling for credit cards as they used to.
One interesting thing: many years ago a Westerner working for an International Agency in Dhaka, Bangladesh was screaming at my friend as he told him how cheap education was in Bangladesh, "Your Government is crazy. Your Government is crazy giving out education so cheap". May be. But when we loose jobs to college degrees that did not cost as much as they cost here, we become fool. Crazy has craze and fool has foolishness. Could anyone tell me which one is better?
I salute John Edwards. And I strongly say this:
Being an American, a citizen of the Great Country, which has seen the Highest of Human Civilization than any other nation in the world ever, you deserve and it is your right to have
* Universal Health Care
* Universal College Education
Ash
(Ashiqul Saiyed)
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