President Barack Obama gave university students plenty to be excited about in his State of the Union address Tuesday. Yes, we have heard it all before, and yes, the White House’s commitment to education is always reaffirmed in the address. But although Obama made reference to such persistent national issues as Social Security and the ongoing war in Afghanistan, education took center stage.
After celebrating past achievements in science and technology, the president lamented their current state of affairs and claimed that renewed support for education is the answer. What was remarkable was the case he made that the future of the economy depends on education. Obama made the point that in today’s world, job creation is impossible without adequate education and went on to say that in order to compete in the global economy our country must improve its education system.
Here the president hit the nail on the head. If Sputnik was the achievement that unleashed a huge wave of government investment in science, technology and education, the Internet was the innovation that America largely ignored. The rest of the world didn’t, however, and while American teenagers were playing Playstation in their free time, Indian teenagers were learning how to program video games.
This is because other countries realized that in the information age, they didn’t need massive amounts of capital to invest in industrial production in order to succeed. What they needed was knowledge, and to get that they made education priority number one, and, as Obama correctly pointed out, “they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science.”
The issues of outsourcing to India and China and the brain drain of scientists to the United States do not exist just because labor is cheaper in Asia or because America pays scientists well. Simply put, in science and technology, American workers are being outcompeted.
Obama did well to emphasize education as the number one solution to this problem. The past two years saw a resurgence of protectionist policies to prevent outsourcing and encourage consumers to “buy American.” These policies are unsustainable and only postpone the restructuring of the global economy. A top-down policy of regulating American job creation is ineffective and inefficient. The only way to ensure a dynamic and competitive workforce for the future is by making education a priority.
Today, competition in the global economy is closely paralleled by competition in education, specifically in science and technology. Rather than trying to insulate the American economy from competition, an effort must be made to make America’s students more competitive, because, as the president said last night, “we need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” As a student, I would prefer that the government spend less time worrying about outsourcing and more time working on a solution closer to home by investing in education. The idea boils down to less fear of outsourcing, more faith in students.
Obama said in his address that while Sputnik marked the beginning of the Space Race, what we are seeing now is the beginning of the Education Race. Whether or not this is true remains to be seen. That the University of Wisconsin is even now seeking out private funding goes to show that government support for education is yet to come. The price of college education is still on the order of one new car every year. The vast disparity among public schools is still a cause of persistent economic inequality.
However, there is hope in the fact that the White House is coming to terms with the fact that the answer to our country’s economic problems, or at least a large part of that answer, lies in education. The good news is that the future for college students in America, and Madison, is looking a little bit brighter.
Charlie Godfrey ([email protected]) is a freshman undecided on his major.
