Goodbye, 2011, and good riddance! Despite many promising developments, the year ended not so much with a bang, but with a whimper. Bring on 2012!
Last semester I was given the opportunity to contribute a biweekly column to the Daily Lobo, and I’m honored to be asked back again.
The Daily Lobo is the voice of UNM, and like it or not, the Lobo contributes a great deal to press freedom in New Mexico. 2012 will certainly be an eventful year, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you as it unfolds.
I learned many things while doing research for my columns in 2011, and I hope my readers learned something, too. The most important lesson I learned is how expensive it is to attend college in America, and what a drain it can be both financially and physically.
I would never have been able to afford UNM without my wife’s ‘Dependent Education’ tuition benefit — one of the few good benefits left for university employees and their spouses.
Excessive tuition costs, even when offset by scholarships and financial aid, make college more difficult to access for the average person. Keeping tuition unreasonably high not only serves to weed out “undesirables,” as it were; it also enslaves students with huge, burdensome debts.
The U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations that does not offer a fully subsidized college education to its citizens.
Britain is virtually the only European nation to charge college tuition, and when the government recently raised the (minimal) yearly fees, riots ensued.
I was surprised to learn that, until very recently, several Scandinavian countries offered free college tuition to foreign students. International students can still go to college in Norway free of charge; they just have to pay for their own books and housing.
The outrageous costs associated with going to college in America, and fear of the potentially enormous debts involved, have already driven many people away from higher education — even those eligible for financial aid or grants. Students who qualify for federal loans are often shouldered with debts of tens of thousands of dollars.
With so few decent-paying jobs available — and little chance this will change any time soon — they’ll likely never be able to pay the money back. Student debt has now reached crisis levels. This situation must be remedied, and soon, or America’s ability to compete on a global scale will be seriously diminished.
I’ve come to the conclusion that forgiving all current student loan debt and severely cutting the costs of attending college are imperative for the future economic health of our nation. The movement to forgive student loan debt as a means of economic stimulus has gained some political momentum lately, and I pray this trend continues.
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One of the more painful lessons I learned as a “nontraditional” student last semester is that many traditional students couldn’t care less about actually educating themselves, and are simply in college because their parents demand it, or because they think it will get them a better job.
It’s depressing how willfully ignorant many students are about the world around them, and how little they truly care. Too many young people seem to be more interested in the latest gadgets, fashions, reality TV and social networking than they are in education.
Public schooling appears to have destroyed many students’ ability to think critically, and their complete lack of interest in anything but the most trivial matters is disturbing. It doesn‘t bode well for our future. I just wish students could appreciate how lucky they are to attend college in this day and age.
On the other hand, I had the opportunity to meet some wonderful, conscientious kids who are intelligent, socially active, highly literate and engaged in their studies. I admire the energy and determination they exhibit — but unfortunately, in my experience at UNM, they represent a minority.
2012 will not bring the end of the world as some believe. Mayan scholars will tell you that we’ll simply be entering a new astrological cycle in December; it’s like the odometer on your car as each section of the meter reaches nine and then clicks over to zero. 2012 is year zero. A new age beckons, and the future is in our hands.
Throughout the year, I’ll continue to highlight important issues that impact us as individuals and the UNM community as a whole. This is an incredibly exciting time to be alive, and I’m grateful to be here with you all on this amazing journey.
