Gadzillions of studies point to the GI Bills recovering their costs many times over as recipients of free higher education pay more taxes because of higher earnings.
Yet taxpayers demonstrate increasing reluctance to adequately fund public colleges and universities, let alone public elementary and secondary schools. In fact, Americans frequently flirt with the notion that only parents and students--not all taxpayers--should pay all education expenses for the nation's younger generations.
Increasing numbers of students now receive both diplomas and debts of $50,000 or more when they graduate from colleges and universities. Substantial portions of their early career salaries then go to repay their education loans rather than into savings, investments and consumer purchases.
Before tax-supported public education arrived in the middle of America's 19th Century, only the wealthy could afford schooling for their children. That left the overwhelming majority of Americans illiterate, relatively unproductive and hopelessly mired in ignorance and poverty.
America's philosophy before 1850 was "them that has, gets." Many generations of Americans never reached their full potentials--a fate facing America's present and future generations unless drastic steps are taken.
One of those drastic steps has to be the reintroduction of a national draft of America's young men and women to serve their country's military and civilian needs for specific periods of time--followed by guarantees of free higher education in academic institutions and trade schools.
Imagine thousands of young men and women earning minimum wages for serving as tutors in schools, orderlies in hospitals and clinics, restoring park trails and campgrounds, removing graffiti and renovating residences in blighted areas--to name just a few activities.
Imagine other thousands of young men and women earning minimum wages by instead opting to replenish the ranks of America's understaffed regular armed forces on active duty.
Then imagine the nation's public and private institutions of higher learning and trade schools using those guaranteed tuition resources to rebound with fresh financial vigor and guarantee America's strength in the future.
Don't let America's 21st Century readopt the philosophy of "them that has, gets." (1 AUGUST 1999)
