Human Capital

   Education is more than acquiring information. Wisdom comes with knowing how to use that information.
   Skill is more than learning techniques and developing talent. Art arrives when skill and talent merge to produce something of value and beauty.

   Society honors the value of education when it encourages its citizens to acquire information and develop talent so that everyone produces things of value, whether these things are pencils, cars or sculpture; music, novels or drama; furniture, lighting fixtures or computer programs. Whether designing, building or using things of value, this is the nature of human capital. and society prospers when investing in human capital yields a bountiful return.

   But to justify the investment in human capital that education offers, expected future earnings must be greater than the present earnings that the student/worker must forgo. He or she must be willing to put off present earnings in the hope of gaining higher future earnings.
   Today, however, students often have to borrow tuition money, and unless there are assurances that the rate of interest on these loans is low enough to be affordable, and the expected future earnings high enough to justify the expense and risk, the investment may not be worth pursuing.
   And it's not just higher education -- college or specialized trade schools -- that are key. For some products, high skill levels don't matter. For other products, location matters greatly.

   So there will be a need for skilled hand-work on high-end products. They will be niche markets, carrying high prices that reflect the quality of the product as well as the wage cost for highly skilled craft workers. Robotic manufacturing can be done in many places, but even here, there will be a need for skilled operators of the machines.
   Meanwhile, it's becoming increasingly clear that America must pay closer attention to the education of its workers, whether they be engineers or academics, teachers or firefighters, police or military, civil service or farmhands, truck drivers or mechanics, airline pilots or cotton pickers.

   How important is this issue? Important enough so that the President is going an a bus tour to promote a plan to "make college more affordable, tackle rising costs, and improve value for students and their families." Why? Because, he said in a mass emailing, "the average student taking out loans to pay for education graduates with more than $26,000 in debt."
   That's equivalent to more than a year's salary for a beginning teacher. And some put the debt level far higher, especially for engineering or science graduates of prestige schools.

   As for the political opposition, this question must be asked: How can anyone be against education, when it has been documented many times that there is a direct correlation between education and income, and that an educated society is a freer society?
   We haven't heard much from conservatives recently about Obama's education plan, but here's what Rick Santorum reportedly said more than a year ago about the idea of making college more accessible to all Americans: "President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."
   "Liberal college professors," according to Santorum, are dangerous, because they are teaching communism disguised as equal opportunity. "Where does the social engineering stop?" Santorum protested.
   All would be better, according to conservative preaching, if people simply follow the doctrine and not bother to think for themselves. But critical thinking is a keystone of education, and that may be why the Radical Righteous oppose mass education. If anyone's going to educate the masses, this attitude goes, it will be them. And as Rush Limbaugh might put it, "I'll do your thinking for you."

   The goal of this blog is not to demand agreement, but to provoke thought, because belief without thought endangers freedom.