6 June 2018 – We, as a nation, need to extend the present system that provides free, universal education up through high school to cover college to the baccalaureate level.

DISCLOSURE: Teaching is my family business. My father was a teacher. My mother was a teacher. My sister’s first career was as a teacher. My brother in law was a teacher. My wife is a teacher. My son is a teacher. My daughter in law is a teacher. Most of my aunts and uncles and cousins are or were teachers. I’ve spent a lot of years teaching at the college level, myself. Some would say that I have a conflict of interest when covering developments in the education field. Others might argue that I know whereof I speak.

Since WW II, there has been a growing realization that the best careers go to those with at least a bachelor’s degree in whatever field they choose. Yet, at the same time, society has (perhaps inadvertently, although I’m not naive enough to eschew thinking there’s a lot of blame to go around) erected a monumental barrier to anyone wanting to get an education. Since the mid-1970s, the cost of higher education has vastly outstripped the ability of most people to pay for it.

In 1975, the price of attendance in college was about one fifth of the median family income (see graph above). In 2016, it was over a third. That makes sending kids to college a whole lot harder than it used to be. If your family happens to have less than median household income, that barrier looks even higher, and is getting steeper.

MORE DISCLOSURE: The reason I don’t have a Ph.D. today is that two years into my Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. program, Arizona State University jacked up the tuition beyond my (not incosiderable at the time) ability to pay.

I’d like everyone in America to consider the following propositions:

1. A bachelor’s degree is the new high-school diploma;
2. Having an educated population is a requirement for our technology-based society;
3. Without education, upward mobility is nearly impossible;
4. Ergo, it is a requirement for our society to ensure that every citizen capable of getting a college degree gets one.

EVEN MORE DISCLOSURE: Horace Mann, often credited as the Father of Public Education, was born in the same town (Franklin, MA) that I was, and our family charity is a scholarship fund dedicated to his memory.

About Mann’s intellectual progressivism, the historian Ellwood P. Cubberley said: “No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of education ends.” (source: Wikipedia)

The Wikipedia article goes on to say: “Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn unruly American children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval from modernizers, especially in the Whig Party, for building public schools. Most states adopted a version of the system Mann established in Massachusetts, especially the program for normal schools to train professional teachers.”

That was back in the mid-nineteenth century. At that time, the United States was in the midst of a shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy. We’ve since completed that transition and are now shifting to an information-based economy. In future, full participation in the workforce will require everyone to have at least a bachelor’s degree.

So, when progressive politicians, like Bernie Sanders, make noises about free universal college education, YOU should listen!

It’s about time we, as a society, owned up to the fact that times have changed a lot since the mid-nineteenth century. At that time, universal free education to about junior high school level was considered enough. Since then, it was extended to high school. It’s time to extend it further to the bachelor’s-degree level.

That doesn’t mean shutting down Ivy League colleges. For those who can afford them, private and for-profit colleges can provide superior educational experiences. But, publicly funded four-year colleges offering tuition-free education to everyone has become a strategic imperative.