E. Scott Cracraft - Back to school

This month, students will be returning to college or will be attending for the first time. They will worry about papers, exams, and of course, their social lives. But, students and their parents will also be thinking about the rising cost of higher education and how they are going to pay for it. The students, especially, will be worried that they graduate and get a job good enough to pay off student loans for the next decade or two. If they cannot, student loans cannot be discharged under federal bankruptcy laws.

At least a few students and their families will be asking "why?" Some may even ask why Germany and many other democracies are able to afford free higher education and why the world's remaining superpower cannot. In some countries, like Denmark, besides free tuition, students even get a monthly stipend for living expenses. One of the reasons that European students often know much more about their world than our students is that they often have summers to travel because they are not working to pay tuition.

Of course, we cannot expect that here from conservatives but even many liberals lack the vision that we can do this in the U.S.A. Until very recently and due in large part to the influence of Bernie Sanders, even Democrats did not take the idea seriously.

Unfortunately, N.H. has the highest student debt and the highest tuition rates for any public institutions. Why? Because conservative interests and politicians in Concord refuse to adequately fund it. In the average state, the state legislatures provide around 50-55 percent of the cost of a community college student's education. In N.H. it is around 25-27 percent. N.H. is among the worst but it is happening everywhere and the cost of tuition is more and more being laid on students and their families.

In the 1960s and 70s, students could finance an education at a public college or university with some savings from high school, a college and/or summer job, and perhaps a bit of help from family. In fact, in some states like California, community colleges (often called "junior" colleges in those days) were tuition-free or almost so.

This author's spouse completed her first two years of college in the mid-70s at such a California junior college. She only paid for textbooks and perhaps some incidental fees. She paid no tuition.

Of course, many, both Republicans and Democrats, are going to whine "but how are you going to pay for it?" Is it possible we can really can pay for it but simply do not have our national priorities straight?

Could we perhaps afford it if the wealthy and corporations paid their fair share of taxes? Or, perhaps we would have the money if we were not paying billions for military equipment that does not work and paying gouging defense contractors? Why don't more Americans question how much was spent on Bush's illegal war? Or, why aren't we more concerned about the amount of tax money going to build more and more prisons when it is actually cheaper in most cases to send someone to college than to lock them up?

National security and public safety are, of course, important priorities. But how can the nation really be safe and secure without an educated population? At the present cost of higher education, the arts, humanities and social sciences — all those things that make us better educated people — are being downplayed. There are both intrinsic and extrinsic values of an education.

Students themselves and their parents need to start asking "why" and doing something about it. We need to let our elected officials at the Federal, state, and local level that education is an investment, not a burden.

For those who find "free stuff" anathema, perhaps we could ask students for something in return to benefit our society. Perhaps we could even tie a free or very-low cost higher education system to some sort of national service, military or civilian where students could help "earn" these benefits.

(Scott Cracraft is a citizen, a taxpayer, a veteran, and a resident of Gilford.)