Our nation had approximately two dozen colleges when Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862, providing public funding so that a university education might someday be available for all who had the will and the capacity for it. The result was the best educational system in the world and a realization of Enlightenment ideals.
Today, five of the “top 10” public universities are in California, and the California State University and University of California systems have no equals on the planet. Their graduates drive the world’s fifth-largest economy.
Some think, however, that our colleges are inefficient luxuries no longer affordable; that perhaps in 1862 during wartime we had more discretionary educational funding than today; that public education doesn’t expand but drags on the economy; that maybe more prisons should be built instead; and that quality education should once again be restricted to the gilded elite, and not subsidized for qualified minorities, veterans, or immigrants. The great Derek Bok has warned us about this kind of thinking, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Vote yes on Proposition 30. Do it for yourself!
— Dan Biezad – San Luis Obispo
— Dan Biezad – San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2012.
