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Printer-Friendly ModeCutting Promise Scholarship not fiscally wise, just or funny
September 28, 2009 —
I don’t know if it was a joke or not, but I once saw an advertisement in a newspaper that read, “Lost Dog: black, one-eyed, three-legged, Labrador with half a tail missing – responds to the name ‘Lucky.’” The authors of such a joke, be it punk kids or twisted Fate itself, lack sophistication in their sense of humor.
The irony of news headlines that say “Michigan Promise Scholarship under Budget Knife” is too much to stand. Either the people who named the scholarship or the people who decided that it would be a good idea to cut it – or both – have a banal sense of humor that is getting no laughter from students in Michigan.
Today, getting a job to pay off debt may require some good fortune, so if you aren’t going to school to be a nurse, a doctor, an engineer, a computer programmer or something else that offers near certain employment, don’t take loans that can’t be paid back waiting tables. People enrolled in college plan around these principles (hopefully – if not, it wouldn’t be a bad idea), and factored into their plans is the financial aid they have coming to them. We all know that our aid can be adjusted, and how much we get will changes from year to year, but when I look at a line that says “Michigan Promise Scholarship: $2,000,” I assume that will not be changing. There are a number of college students who, because of the decision of Michigan’s Legislature, may find themselves unable to pay for enough credits to be fulltime students. The consequences can leave students ineligible for on-campus housing, insurance through their parents’ employers or even graduation. Were these students foolish for having confidence in financial aid? It is hard to argue that, given the name of the scholarship.
Why then did legislators label a scholarship program with a title so implicative of assurance and certainty if there was a possibility that the scholarship would have to be revoked? A legislator in Lansing could hardly face a student and say that he or she was unaware that Michigan may have to make budget cuts; Michigan’s disastrous economy is not a recent development. In many ways, Michiganders are not sympathetic to national and global complaints of economic crisis. With a look of unimpressed scrutiny, we lean closer and say, “Welcome to our world.” If a state legislator really didn’t know that Michigan’s existence is largely defined by the need to make budget cuts, that person does not belong in the Legislature.
But I don’t think legislators were being absent minded when they named the Promise Scholarship program. For a few reasons, I think that even a state in a financial crisis that has lasted since the beginning of deindustrialization – especially a state in financial crisis – can and should guarantee financial assistance to university students. First, it is a wise financial investment for the state, and second, the current financial crisis is the fault of old people who were fiscally irresponsible, and the sacrifices that need to be made to reverse the economic decline should be proportionally carried by those same old people (since we youngsters and our greatgrandchildren will be working our entire lives to pay the debt of the baby boomers.)
A government that taxes income cannot make a better investment than funding college educations. Why? Individuals with a bachelor degree earn on average half-a-million dollars more over their lifetime than do people with only a high school diploma. That means a lot more taxes will be paid over that time. I pay around one third of my paycheck to the Man, so if I were making another half million, the government would rake in plenty more cash than it shelled out for my college education. Only in a casino can your money work for you like that.
In addition to this very basic financial reason why education is the last place to make budget cuts, one must consider the injustice of making young people pay more than they already must to fix the mistakes of our parents and grandparents. Leave us trapped, suckling at the teat of Chinese surplus, with a broken credit market and the least advantages of any American generation, and ask us to make the additional sacrifice of financial assistance to college? You’d have to be out of your mind. The future is not the appropriate place to borrow money from if you won’t be alive to pay it back. If your generation caused a massive economic decline, you should be selling that RV and reading books through your retirement instead of asking your grandkids to find another way to pay for college.