When I Was Your Age, People Could Afford College...

Disclaimer:  I know that my educational rants have been happening closer and closer together as of late, but I can’t help it. I am just too pissed off.  It's really tough to watch something you love get screwed over.  I promise to write more blogs in the near future about something embarrassing I did at the grocery store, but I’m just not feeling it right now.  So, if you're tired of hearing teachers complain about schools, you should probably stop reading.

In the fall of last year, the North Carolina Board of Governors made it possible for state universities to raise their tuition as much as they want. Before this decision was made, students in the North Carolina University System were protected by a 6.5% cap, meaning they would only be spending 6.5% more for school each year. (Which still isn’t great, but at least it’s controlled). UNC-Chapel Hill immediately began discussing a 44% increase over the next 4 years.  Thankfully, the Board of Governors agreed to limit the increases to 10% in February, but that's just for the 2012-2013 school year.  Over the past 10 years college tuition has doubled (something it took 30 years to do in the past), and now North Carolina is allowing the cost of college to increase much more rapidly.

It’s no big secret that the universities needed more money; the state budget backed them into a corner by cutting their funding by 15.6% with last year’s budget. The republican lead general assembly siphoned 414 million dollars out of the state universities’ budgets with a republican backed budget leaving them with fewer financial options. It’s not surprising that the universities turned to tuition increases. Most of the proponents of these tuition increases would cite financial aid and student loans as the basis of their decision. Now, the federal government is trying to double the interest rates on Stafford loans. Not only could college cost students twice as much (forcing them to take out these loans), they could be charged twice as much interest to pay back their loans.  And some articles I've read recently about this problem interview students that went to expensive, private universities, majored in Creative Writing with a minor in Appalachian Folk Ballads that seem shocked and victimized by their inability to get a job or pay back their loans.  I'm not defending them.  But I am enraged at our government's apparent insistence to make higher education only available to certain socio-economic class(es). 

If the federal and state governments want to continue to make it more difficult for middle and lower class individuals to get a college degree, they have got to start giving those students who simply cannot afford a higher education other avenues. However, the federal government decided to take the opposite route last year. They proposed a 20% cut to vocational programs in public high schools and community colleges on a national level. Vocational programs allow students who are not university bound the opportunity to make above minimum wage, to work in a skilled industry, to have some self-respect. I’ve seen first-hand how powerful a vocational program can be for high school students. I’ve taught some very unmotivated, indifferent, and apathetic students who excelled brilliantly in vocational programs, graduated, attended a trade school, and are now making upwards of $40,000 a year. My school has a very impressive vocational program with a large and active FFA; we have classes that teach students electrical trades, and carpentry in our school building. Our HOSA program is also impressive and many of those students attend community college and join the medical field within 2-4 years. But with deep budget cuts happening every year, and with a national focus solely on academic classes like Math and Science, I can’t imagine those programs growing—or even sustaining—any time soon.

I’m not really an “I told you so” kind of person, and I hope that I am not right about this, but if our country doesn’t get it together on education soon, we will see a dramatic increase in unemployment rates and crime rates. (Any teacher will tell you that the best classroom management is a tight and over-planned lesson).  And it won’t always be because there are no jobs available. If we no longer foster skilled labor, there won’t be a skilled labor force to fill positions. Federal, state, and local governments have got to stop putting so much pressure on educators while simultaneously making it financially impossible for students to be successful.

Or, they should go ahead and poor, whoops I meant pour a lot of money into our prison system, because after all, what else is a society without access to education?

Was that last sentence dramatic enough for you? On a lighter note…