Death to Apathy and Complacency in education…
Greetings again! I am just writing today to express my complete disdain for apathy and complacency! Movements like the Occupy Wall Street movement are greatly appreciated and many people still wonder what they can actually do to buck the system. I have wondered personally, how can I change something that is so deeply entrenched within the minds of others? The first step: SPEAK UP! I took the opportunity to do so, just by chance, last night.
The President of my university (Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa) sent out an email asking Drake students to sign a petition supporting more allocation of federal dollars for student financial aid. Upon first glance, of course why not sign? Everyone wants their children to have access to higher education, what a noble cause. However, upon further reflection I could not bring myself to support that cause because of bigger fundamental issues. Such as this idea that we want our children to access to higher education, but why are we talking about the actual cost? Why is there no explanation of why Drake has raised their tuition 4.3% over the past few years, with no accounting given of what the funds have been spent on? Also, we had a scandal last year where the registrar of our beloved university was caught stealing almost $500,000!!! I have yet to hear so much of a peep about this now. So much for accounting, huh? But I digress…
I sent a polite reply to his mass email solicitation and here is his response (note that he called me “Clara” which is not my name ha!):
Clara – many thanks for your thoughtful response. I would argue that ensuring the government’s responsibility to support college attendance and containing college costs are not mutually exclusive. We are a nation that — until recently (last 15 years)– looked at higher education as a public good (the Morrill Act of 1863 that established the land grant universities because the nation needed educated people for the industrial and agricultural revolutions; the GI Bill after WWII, the National Defense Education Act that paid for my graduate studies at Brown because the nation needed Soviet, China and Arabic specialists, etc…), and now more and more looks at it as a private good (it’s your education – you pay for it). At the same time, we recognize that the fact that we’ve fallen from 1st place to 17th in production of college degrees in critical areas is threatened our economic vitality, etc. It has to be a public responsibility at the federal and state levels if we are to guarantee access to higher education. At the same time, there’s no question that college tuition has increased in excess of the CPI (in recent years, the increase in public university tuition has been dramatically higher than the privates, by the way). But here’s some Drake-specific figures you should know: the average increase in private university tuition over the last decade has been 6.4% – at Drake it’s 4.3%; 98% of our students receive financial aid from the university (there were 10 students in this year’s first-year class who didn’t!) – we are spending more than $48 million of Drake money this year on financial aid; in the group of 13 private master’s universities with whom we compete for students, we are ranked at the top for academic quality and we’re 12th in cost – and we’d have to raise tuition $2,000 to get into 11th place. So, bottom line – I don’t think it’s one or the other. Federal and state support for college attendance are essential to ensuring access to higher education for those who cannot otherwise afford it. At the same time, higher education does indeed have a responsibility to contain costs, and to be efficient and effective in the ways in which they use their resources. Best, DEM
A very thoughtful response, right? I sent a reply back, however I will not post it here as this blog is getting rather long. But, my main point was that we as individuals must speak up. When there is injustice, unfairness, or something that just seems a little off, I feel as if it is my duty to ask questions! Asking questions is an essential part in the step to create meaning…
Ciara
