Originally posted by: JediSage
Does this country produce anything but disgruntled social activists any more? I mean, go to practically any college in the country and you'll see students who've been indoctrinated in "multi-culturalism" and "gay" rights, but how about producing some engineers? Or mathematicians? Or doctors? Asia is outpacing us by a MILE in terms of their educated masses, and that's why we can't compete.

Makes me sick. Pretty soon being a professional protester is going to be a job description.

Yeah, I must agree with ADM, in that one isn't at the expense of the other, but I still believe your point about a decreasing professional workforce is relevant. I believe that the main problem with tertiary education systems in the U.S. is that they're so exhorbitant fee-wise, and there's no decent pay-back systems. In Australia, we have HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) whereby the government pays for the fees (except for Student Union fees), and it is taxed from your income once you earn enough money until it is paid off (i.e. once you are placed within a certain income bracket or above). This system isn't perfect, but at least it doesn't scare off people who don't have the money/don't want to take out a $40,000+ student loan from the outset. While I was staying in the U.S., I heard countless stories of people who wanted to go to university, but didn't want to get themselves into a life-long debt. They still don't regret it to this day because of the $ factor, but the point is, they would have if they could have and the system scared them off.

I am actually a firm believer in free tertiary education, which admittedly, would be expensive for any world government to implement. However, not implementing it is short-sighted and motivated by short-term economic/financial results. A long term view would be to say that free tertiary education encourages more tertiary enrolments, more university graduates, leading to an increase in a nation's professional labour-force. A greater professional labour force means more businesses, more companies, more competition, higher wages, more research, more technological improvements, the list goes on...The most important commodity a nation has is its collective intelligence, and every country should invest in it if it's serious about its place in the future. If America took a few billion out of its trillion dollar military expenditure and put it into education, it would be a good start.