Mar 19 2009
State and local officials promise tuition help to low income college students
State and local officials promised a group of low-income middle school students that if they were to go to college, the state would provide them tuition assistance once they were in college. This is part of a promise that state officials are making to low-income students to get them to go to college.
Why does the state think they should push everyone into college?
Careers that do not involve college need workers. Tech companies, construction, plumbing and car repair are all careers that do not require college. Instead, these career require workers to have specialized training. Some of this training is even available at the high school level through ROP (regional occupation program) classes. In fact, many of these careers are in desperate need of workers.
College isn’t the solution to everything, and shouldn’t be pushed as the solution to everyone.
Plumbers and car repair shop owners can make a lot of money. Most of them can make more in a year than a college graduate makes right out of school. In a recession economy - where places aren’t hiring - havins specialized skills in jobs that do not go away is a better guarantee of work and income than a college degree. In a recession economy cars still must be repaired, pipes fixed, and technology kept up at companies. These jobs don’t move with the movement of the economy.
Why is the state pushing one solution - college - for everyone?
Furthermore, kids who take ROP classes are involved in reading, writing and math. Maybe the learning isn’t coming in the traditional classroom setting, but that is ok so long as the skills are learned. Someone learning car repair has to figure out math, a technology student must learn to read manuals to help them out, or to write code. These are classes in the non-traditional environment that greatly benefit students of all sorts - especially those who don’t learn well in a crowded classroom where they cannot get the attention they need.
The state needs to stop pushing everyone into college, or college prep curriculum. It isn’t the answer to everything. It certainly isn’t the snawer to problems now and in the future with the workforce. Instead, let people choose, and offer them the ROP classes so they have options in life.
How is offerring assistance to those who WANT to attend college be perceived as “pushing it”? I am aware that the GOP has always been against allocating money for education, but why should someone who has the aptitude to potentially become a doctor or engineer be deprived that chance? According to your exalted ruler Rash; “A true conservative is one who sees the potential in someone and does what they can to help them achieve their goals.” Of course , he previously stated that the government should not be responsible for its citizens; that they should be self-sufficient. What a shocker-Rash forgetting what he babbled from one speeech to another!
Well, his name is Rush. And I, as a conservative, feel he goes too far.
I am for providing education to all people who are here legally. From K-12. I am against set education spending, especially the way it is done now. I think that the money should be given to the locals, there is no need for a Department of Education and a Secretary of Education (and there are both things in California). Locals can spend money on education better than the state can.
I am against the state promising this to low income students. First, if the state is getting involved in supporting college students, everyone should be supported. Not just those in low income areas. Second, the state doesn’t have any money to promise this. Third, the state doesn’t put any money into alternatives to college and so why should it put money into college? I can tell you, college doesn’t make a better person or a better worker.
Insted of promising these things, the state should restructure current school funding, do something about the Teacher’s Union (which is absurd), and make teacher pay based on merit, not tenure.