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Cuts to colleges not a good choice [UPDATED]
Published 11:13am Thursday, November 1, 2012 Updated 1:14pm Thursday, November 1, 2012I find it alarming that a college education is increasingly out of reach for middle and lower income Minnesotans, and Sen. Ingebrigtsen has only been making it worse.
As many young people headed back to college this fall, students and families across Minnesota are coping with record high tuition bills and looming student debt. For too many others, a college degree is no longer a financial possibility at all.
In spite of this, Ingebrigtsen voted last year to roll back state funding of our college students to 1998 levels. To put that in perspective, many of today’s college freshmen were just starting kindergarten in 1998.
Yet, as the cost of almost everything else has gone up over the past 14 years, somehow Ingebrigtsen figures that Minnesota college students can get by with much less.
But gutting our colleges and universities doesn’t just rob our young people of a brighter future; it destroys our state’s jobs engine. Minnesota’s greatest economic asset is its world-class workforce.
If we don’t train our students for the in-demand skills of tomorrow, how will we attract the jobs of tomorrow?
We need our colleges and universities to continue to be economic drivers for our state, generating the new ideas that have always set Minnesota’s economy apart.
Our students should have the ability to afford an education at one of our many Technical schools, Community Colleges or four-year universities.
When Ingebrigtsen voted to gut our colleges and universities, he set Minnesota on the wrong course for long-term economic prosperity.
We will never fully recover from the Great Recession if our young people lack the skills they need to compete in the 21st century, or if they’re buried in debt and unable to find good-paying jobs here in Minnesota.
Ingebrigtsen has done enough damage. This November, let’s get Minnesota moving in the right direction.
Let’s vote for Dan Skogen for state senator.
Heidi Paulson
Fergus Falls
