The graduating Class of 2009 marks a historical turning point for higher education in this country. No, we didn’t break the record for stabbings on campus we’ve taken part in or how many keggers we have participated in. Did you know that if you take the 20 and the 9 from 2009 and then multiply the two numbers you get 180; the number of years it will take the average student from our class to pay off student loans?
I was visiting with a friend the other day and she pointed out an article to me right before I got up to go. It was an article written by George Miller and it got me quite worried.
In this article, which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 26th titled, “Raid on student aid,” he reports that Congress was considering a vote on a budget plan that will take 12.7 billion out of federal student financial aid, the largest cut in history. Update: The House of Representatives voted in favor of passing this bill a week later. Now why would Congress do such a thing? Two reasons actually.
First, members of Congress say that the cuts to higher education are necessary because of the ever-growing budget deficit. At the same time however, there is a bill out there being considered that would again give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. Tax breaks when we are currently facing our largest budget deficit in the history of our nation, I’m not a math major, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Secondly, our war and national defense spending are through the roof. Resources going to education and healthcare are just simply pale in comparison to what we spend in national defense. According to the Center of Defense of Information, in the fiscal year 2004 the U.S spent 452 billion dollars in national defense; while we were devoting 58 billion to education. What’s even more stunning is how much we spend on national defense compared to other countries. In more information from the Center of National Defense, the U.S. spent 405 billion in national defense spending in 2003.
The 190 other independent nations inhabiting this world spent 485 billion combined in their national defense that same year. By my calculations, this means the rest of the world only outspend us by 80 billion dollars. Hey, maybe I should have taken the Math 100 exemption test when I had the chance. On second thought, I think Math 100 is right where I belong. I do think however that our President should have come to the classes when we learned fractions. He’ll need to understand how they work when his poll ratings plummet to that level.
At the same time our country is falling farther and farther behind, the rest of the world is catching up. According to the National Academies of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, China graduated 500,000 engineers and India graduated 200,000. Add those two figures and take away a zero you get how many students majoring in engineering graduated in 2004 from the United States. 70,000 is the answer for those who are math challenged like me.
We are living in a time of fierce global competition where developing nations like India and China, much to our horror, are actually developing. So with that in mind, maybe our government and more specifically our Administration need to cut back on national defense spending, or no maybe that’s not the name for it. In the era of war on terror, we should be calling it “national pre-emptive strike spending.”
The rising cost of higher education is taking a toll on everybody. I got the wake up call about the dire situation higher education is in just the other day. Actually, it was a call from my mom. It’s not too uncommon to get a call from my mom but she was in a panicked state, which also isn’t too uncommon but that’s a story for a different article I suppose. She was calling from the supermarket back home and needed to buy something for supper and was in a quite a pickle. Unfortunately however, pickles were completely out of the budget. The choices for supper back at home were going to either be hot pockets or spaghettio’s. I told her to go with the spaghettio’s with meatballs.
“Kevin, you know the spaghettio’s with meatball cost extra,” she said.
“But mom, the hockpockets may be cheaper, but can you honestly feel good after eating a hot pocket? You’re safer with the Spaghettio’s.”
“You’re right Kevin, what was I thinking?” Don’t let anyone tell you your debt from college wasn’t worth it.
Kevin Dooley is a UMass student.