The Union Leader reports that Governor Chris (‘Bernie’) Sununu has ‘promised to create the New Hampshire Career Academy, a partnership involving community colleges, employers and local high schools that will enable motivated and capable students to get a tuition-free associate degree’.
So, is this part of the state’s court-mandated responsibility to provide an opportunity to get an adequate education? If it is, why stop at an associate’s degree? Why not have tuition-free bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees? But if it’s not, what’s the constitutional justification for it?
And why limit participation to ‘motivated and capable students’? Doesn’t that discriminate against students who aren’t particularly motivated, or particularly capable? Aren’t they deserving of assistance, too?
If less motivated and less capable students are not deserving of such assistance, why can’t we apply those same restrictions to our K-12 schools? It would save taxpayers a lot of money, and remove a lot of distractions that now hamstring kids who are doing their best to learn.
Finally, why should parents who can afford to send their own kids to community college be subsidized by everyone else?
Note that this last question applies to parents of students who currently take college-level courses, and job-specific training courses, while still in high school. When did the definition of ‘adequate education’ expand to include college and job training? Wasn’t it supposed to be about preparation for citizenship?
The reasoning behind this new development is similar to that put forth by the United States Supreme Court in Kelo vs. New London: ‘It’s okay to take property from these guys to give to those guys, because those guys will use it to generate more tax revenue in the future.’ This is the kind of thinking that grows out of conflating education with workforce development. Both the taxpayers and the students themselves are being husbanded like farm animals.
Thank goodness we elected a Republican to the governor’s office. Otherwise, we might have ended up with someone who looks for opportunities to grow government (and consequently diminish liberty) by creating new entitlements. Dodged a bullet there, didn’t we?
