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| Grandfather E V McKim Sr's practical education |
© 2015 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. One of the talking points for
politicians is free college for students. They reason that preschool to high
school graduation in public education is free, why not college? It is not free,
someone else pays.
Perhaps we should debate the aim of our
education system. Thomas Jefferson wrote that education had two aims, "The
laboring and the learned. Few students had the ability to be (academically) learned
but our country always needs educated labor."
In today's world our public schools push
all students to attend college. In 1968 it was not my intention to attend college.
My Grandmother Frieda wanted me to go so I went.
In 1917 she got a Masters Degree
from Western New Mexico University in Silver City. It was then New Mexico State
Teachers' College. She had come to New Mexico in 1908 from upstate New York to
be a teacher in a one room schoolhouse in Three Rivers. Later she taught in
White Oaks.
Of her children only my uncle went
to college. He got a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1952 after serving in
the Navy during WWII. I went to New Mexico State University in 1968 reluctantly
since I already was a fine photographer. My father taught at the Air Force
School of Photography. I thought I had all of the education I needed.
But my grandmother saw something in
me that a college education made better. Ultimately I got a Ph.D. in
Educational Administration with a focus on distance education. But I could have
just been a photographer and writer. Life is a funny old dog when it comes to
what we set out to do and what happens.
America was built by artisans and
laborers. Two of my great-grandparents came to America to work on the
railroads, one from Sweden and the other from Ireland. My Grandmother Frieda's
husband was a railroad engineer in steam locomotives.
He only went through the fourth
grade but could fix almost anything. Today some are saying that only the
academics really matter. Tell that to someone with an overflowing toilet.
In Junior High I took six semesters
of shop covering tools, wood, metal, electrical, automotive, and home building during
those three years. It was outstanding. I am handy enough to handle most things
and experienced enough to know when things need to be fixed by someone who
really knows what they are doing.
We will always need handy people in
our society. Everything will break, we just do not know when. Instead of
pushing every student to college we should smile on all education, be it
academic or mechanical.
The movement for free college really
is because colleges in the last twenty years have increased the tuition and
fees many times the inflation rate. I went to New Mexico State University
twenty years ago for my Ph.D. The tuition and fees were about six hundred
dollars a semester.
Currently at NMSU it is nearly four
thousand dollars a semester so that either parents must pay the cost or the
students incur lots of debt. The student-loan default rate is terrible. The
solution for some is free college to keep students from going into debt. But
should they be going to college in the first place?
The college graduation rate in New
Mexico is perhaps forty percent with many students just quitting. These
students have student loan debt and no degree. That is one of the things
driving the horrible student loan default rate.
Many of the current graduates are
either under-employed or unemployed. The college degree for many did not make
life better as to supporting themselves. Now one of my favorite classes at
college was a wonderful year of Irish writing from poetry to novels. But what
pays the bills are the things I do which require my Ph.D. No, column writing
does not require a degree, but my statistics and research background helps.
Perhaps the current generation of
college students who have graduated and cannot find a degree-required job should
have explored something more practical to do. Would it be better if they had a professional
trade to support themselves? They could afford college later if they found a desire
to change fields.
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