#1: Improve access to undergraduate college education
Iowa has long had a reputation for running a great educational system, but only about 90% of adults here have graduated from high school. In 1900, that would have been a miracle; in 2007, it should be a disappointment. An eighth-grade education may have been enough in the time of Teddy Roosevelt, but today a high school diploma is a minimum entry requirement for most legitimate jobs. We'll never reach a 100% graduation rate, but we should be intent upon pushing that figure into the high nineties, just as a minimum functional standard.
According to the Census Bureau, those with high school diplomas earn, on average, about 50% more per year than those who don't. Those with college degrees earn, on average, almost twice as much as those who stopped with high school.
The relationship between education and income is one of the most iron-clad in all of our economic world today. That's why getting as many Iowans as possible into and through post-secondary education, whether it's an associate's degree or a bachelor's degree or beyond, is probably the most important step that we can take to make Iowans more prosperous. The only barrier to any Iowan's completion of a two- or four-year college degree should be his or her own motivation -- not finances, distance, or willingness on the part of the state to serve every taxpayer.
We ought to be realistic without being condescending: Not everyone wants -- or even needs -- to get a four-year college degree. But education is a peculiar thing: It's easiest to get it when you're young -- which is when you're least likely to appreciate it. Once people exit their early 20's, it's difficult to return to school. So, in general, it's best to encourage as many young people as possible to get post-secondary education while they're still young and aren't passing up other opportunities in order to get it.
That's why we need to apply a dose of imagination to the way in which we deliver education here. First, we ought to see to it that as many Iowa kids as possible at least stick through two years of post-secondary schooling. Rapidly-rising tuition rates have made it difficult for many Iowans to afford their degrees, and the expected family contribution calculated by the Federal student-aid formula is oftentimes far more than a family budget can reasonably sustain. In an ideal world, parents would save enough to send their kids to college, squirreling away money from the child's birth on. But investments can be unpredictable, expenses along the way are often unforeseen, and tuition rates can be an erratic target around which to plan.
But what is the cost if students aren't able to obtain the post-secondary education they need? More than anything, the costs come from lost and missed opportunities -- and these accumulate to society. We've experienced endless grandstanding by politicians who take credit for "creating jobs" -- which they simply aren't capable of doing. The market creates jobs, just as the market destroys them. Fundamentally, the gas lamplighter of 1875 lost his job for the same reason that the ethanol-plant worker of 2005 gained hers: The market needed something different from what it had before, and labor demands changed.
Government doesn't have the power to create jobs any more than it has the power to make the sun shine. But it does have a unique capacity to ensure things like universal access to post-secondary education, and in so doing, government can help to ensure that the workers whose jobs are created and destroyed by the market can adjust quickly to make themselves more valuable and more adaptable to a changing marketplace. Today, that marketplace clearly rewards education beyond the high school diploma.
Yet, even today, huge portions of the state are more than 120 miles (about two hours' drive) away from one of Iowa's three state universities, making it difficult for residents living there to have the same access to college education as those living in east-central Iowa. Combined with the challenge of rapidly-rising tuition rates, this geographic isolation has put further educational opportunity too far out of reach for many Iowans.
State leadership has been willing to risk millions of taxpayer dollars on "economic development" incentives based on vague promises that have on several occasions turned out to be disastrous failures -- but those same leaders have been stingy about insisting on better access to undergraduate degrees, where the same scale of investment would be certain to deliver returns.
Iowa State University is on a $135 million drive to raise funds for new athletic facilities. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But if we can raise $135 million to improve athletic facilities, we ought to be able to put comparable levels of energy into raising $135 million to put more Iowans through school -- especially those students for whom Iowa, Iowa State, and UNI are distant road trips, and especially those prospective students who didn't complete degrees when they were in their early 20s.
We need to use our community college facilities to make the two-year degree the new standard. We need to use technology to help deliver collegiate-level education everywhere in the state, not just in three campus towns. We need to re-evaluate what it is we're really charging students for their schooling.
Some people object to spending money on higher education because well-educated workers are highly mobile -- so it's possible that we as a state can subsidize growth for other states. But why is that fear so often overheated? Are we so afraid that Iowa is unattractive to educated workers that we think anyone with a degree will catch the first bus out of town? Of course some people will leave -- just as people move away from idyllic places like Hawaii and Southern California every day. People will always move away from wherever they know as home. Worrying about what we're spending to educate Iowans who might move away is the wrong concern. Our focus should be on making Iowa so attractive that we can abandon the language of "keeping people in Iowa" and adopt the language of a confident place.
Improved access doesn't require that the state build a new university, nor even that that state actually provide the service. It may be quite efficient to contract out the actual delivery of the educational services to private educators. What's most important is that we use our ingenuity to ensure that no one in Iowa fails to get a post-secondary education for reasons of cost or access.
If we can wage war via unmanned aircraft and explore the surface of Mars by remote control, then surely we have the knowledge and tools necessary to deliver college degrees online. MIT has already pioneered the use of the Internet to deliver college coursework with its OpenCourseWare project. If MIT is unafraid of making its educational content available to the public -- for free, even -- then Iowa's state colleges and universities need to be equally open to developing programs that would allow Iowans to obtain their two- and four-year degrees through flexible, online-based programs. The schools presently offer extremely limited choices for these kinds of programs, and that fails the very taxpayers who help to fund those institutions.
The traditional college experience isn't going to disappear -- and it's within reach for most young people graduating from high school, if they're willing to front the necessary effort. Educating these prospective students is and ought to remain a priority. But just as important is reaching the adults who, for whatever reasons, have been unable to pursue post-secondary education -- especially the bachelor's degree. Some opportunities are available for these adults, but we have not yet reached the "no-brainer" point: The stage at which the only reason one might not have completed such a degree is because he or she hasn't tried.
When we think of non-traditional students, we have to consider the hurdles they may need to overcome: Finances may be limited because they're trying to raise children or pay for medical care, travel may be difficult because they live far from population centers, or time may be in short supply because they work the third shift and sleep during the day in order to have some family time in the evenings.
We have some limited programs already in place to redeem this shortcoming: The Iowa Tuition Tax Credit, for instance. But being able to pay for something isn't the same as being able to get it. Passengers aboard the Titanic may have been wealthy, but their wealth was worthless when they were kept out of the lifeboats. We need to think not just in terms of the direct expense of attending college, but also of the physical access people have to the educational system itself.
According to the Census Bureau, those with high school diplomas earn, on average, about 50% more per year than those who don't. Those with college degrees earn, on average, almost twice as much as those who stopped with high school.
The relationship between education and income is one of the most iron-clad in all of our economic world today. That's why getting as many Iowans as possible into and through post-secondary education, whether it's an associate's degree or a bachelor's degree or beyond, is probably the most important step that we can take to make Iowans more prosperous. The only barrier to any Iowan's completion of a two- or four-year college degree should be his or her own motivation -- not finances, distance, or willingness on the part of the state to serve every taxpayer.
We ought to be realistic without being condescending: Not everyone wants -- or even needs -- to get a four-year college degree. But education is a peculiar thing: It's easiest to get it when you're young -- which is when you're least likely to appreciate it. Once people exit their early 20's, it's difficult to return to school. So, in general, it's best to encourage as many young people as possible to get post-secondary education while they're still young and aren't passing up other opportunities in order to get it.
That's why we need to apply a dose of imagination to the way in which we deliver education here. First, we ought to see to it that as many Iowa kids as possible at least stick through two years of post-secondary schooling. Rapidly-rising tuition rates have made it difficult for many Iowans to afford their degrees, and the expected family contribution calculated by the Federal student-aid formula is oftentimes far more than a family budget can reasonably sustain. In an ideal world, parents would save enough to send their kids to college, squirreling away money from the child's birth on. But investments can be unpredictable, expenses along the way are often unforeseen, and tuition rates can be an erratic target around which to plan.
But what is the cost if students aren't able to obtain the post-secondary education they need? More than anything, the costs come from lost and missed opportunities -- and these accumulate to society. We've experienced endless grandstanding by politicians who take credit for "creating jobs" -- which they simply aren't capable of doing. The market creates jobs, just as the market destroys them. Fundamentally, the gas lamplighter of 1875 lost his job for the same reason that the ethanol-plant worker of 2005 gained hers: The market needed something different from what it had before, and labor demands changed.
Government doesn't have the power to create jobs any more than it has the power to make the sun shine. But it does have a unique capacity to ensure things like universal access to post-secondary education, and in so doing, government can help to ensure that the workers whose jobs are created and destroyed by the market can adjust quickly to make themselves more valuable and more adaptable to a changing marketplace. Today, that marketplace clearly rewards education beyond the high school diploma.
Yet, even today, huge portions of the state are more than 120 miles (about two hours' drive) away from one of Iowa's three state universities, making it difficult for residents living there to have the same access to college education as those living in east-central Iowa. Combined with the challenge of rapidly-rising tuition rates, this geographic isolation has put further educational opportunity too far out of reach for many Iowans.
State leadership has been willing to risk millions of taxpayer dollars on "economic development" incentives based on vague promises that have on several occasions turned out to be disastrous failures -- but those same leaders have been stingy about insisting on better access to undergraduate degrees, where the same scale of investment would be certain to deliver returns.
Iowa State University is on a $135 million drive to raise funds for new athletic facilities. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But if we can raise $135 million to improve athletic facilities, we ought to be able to put comparable levels of energy into raising $135 million to put more Iowans through school -- especially those students for whom Iowa, Iowa State, and UNI are distant road trips, and especially those prospective students who didn't complete degrees when they were in their early 20s.
We need to use our community college facilities to make the two-year degree the new standard. We need to use technology to help deliver collegiate-level education everywhere in the state, not just in three campus towns. We need to re-evaluate what it is we're really charging students for their schooling.
Some people object to spending money on higher education because well-educated workers are highly mobile -- so it's possible that we as a state can subsidize growth for other states. But why is that fear so often overheated? Are we so afraid that Iowa is unattractive to educated workers that we think anyone with a degree will catch the first bus out of town? Of course some people will leave -- just as people move away from idyllic places like Hawaii and Southern California every day. People will always move away from wherever they know as home. Worrying about what we're spending to educate Iowans who might move away is the wrong concern. Our focus should be on making Iowa so attractive that we can abandon the language of "keeping people in Iowa" and adopt the language of a confident place.
Improved access doesn't require that the state build a new university, nor even that that state actually provide the service. It may be quite efficient to contract out the actual delivery of the educational services to private educators. What's most important is that we use our ingenuity to ensure that no one in Iowa fails to get a post-secondary education for reasons of cost or access.
If we can wage war via unmanned aircraft and explore the surface of Mars by remote control, then surely we have the knowledge and tools necessary to deliver college degrees online. MIT has already pioneered the use of the Internet to deliver college coursework with its OpenCourseWare project. If MIT is unafraid of making its educational content available to the public -- for free, even -- then Iowa's state colleges and universities need to be equally open to developing programs that would allow Iowans to obtain their two- and four-year degrees through flexible, online-based programs. The schools presently offer extremely limited choices for these kinds of programs, and that fails the very taxpayers who help to fund those institutions.
The traditional college experience isn't going to disappear -- and it's within reach for most young people graduating from high school, if they're willing to front the necessary effort. Educating these prospective students is and ought to remain a priority. But just as important is reaching the adults who, for whatever reasons, have been unable to pursue post-secondary education -- especially the bachelor's degree. Some opportunities are available for these adults, but we have not yet reached the "no-brainer" point: The stage at which the only reason one might not have completed such a degree is because he or she hasn't tried.
When we think of non-traditional students, we have to consider the hurdles they may need to overcome: Finances may be limited because they're trying to raise children or pay for medical care, travel may be difficult because they live far from population centers, or time may be in short supply because they work the third shift and sleep during the day in order to have some family time in the evenings.
We have some limited programs already in place to redeem this shortcoming: The Iowa Tuition Tax Credit, for instance. But being able to pay for something isn't the same as being able to get it. Passengers aboard the Titanic may have been wealthy, but their wealth was worthless when they were kept out of the lifeboats. We need to think not just in terms of the direct expense of attending college, but also of the physical access people have to the educational system itself.
- *** HOW MANY COLLEGE GRADUATES STAY, AND HOW MANY ACTUALLY LEAVE? ***
- *** HOW MANY START 4-YEAR DEGREES BUT DROP OUT? ***
- Correlation with health-care costs
- What government should do:
- What individuals should do:
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