Editor,
When speaking before an audience of higher education stakeholders this past Friday, Gov. Susana Martinez expressed her discontent with New Mexican students taking more than four years to complete a college degree, belittling them for getting “off track,” burdening taxpayers and ultimately hurting our state economy.
She essentially argues that students must be disciplined. This is, by all accounts, a truculent mischaracterization and we should take umbrage with her administration’s misguided education policies.
I can’t, however, argue against the impetus of her concern. According to College Complete America, an alliance of 33 state governments, a mere 36 percent of students at flagship universities finish in four years flat. Most students will go on to be super (or super super) seniors and I think everyone can agree that this far from ideal.
The governor’s plan, Route to 66, encourages timely degree completion with the goal of increasing the number of post-secondary degree and certificate holding New Mexicans to 66 percent by 2030. To achieve this measure, she implores universities to incentivize four-year degree completion, cap tuition and limit “frivolous” general education requirements. She encourages these reforms without making any promise to increase higher education funding.
But the state’s annual budget cuts, coupled with tuition increases, place an unfair burden on our generation and have forced us to take on record high student loan debt. In the United States alone, 43.3 million people now owe $1.26 trillion in aggregate, surpassing credit card debt and holding many back from home ownership.
This college debt is both a burden to student and taxpayer, but the governor’s diagnosis and treatment is flat out wrong. Degree completion rates are not a symptom of lazy millennials sleeping through class or partying too often, and incentivizing faster completion cannot significantly improve statewide attainment rates.
Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles have found nationwide that time spent by students socializing with friends hit an all-time low in 2014. Students are, in fact, excessively busy with classes and employment.
University life has changed since the governor was in school. During the late 1970s a student could work a summer job and cover the cost of two semesters worth of classes. Now we must work long days with flexible schedules to make an hourly wage that is barely enough to cover the cost of a cup of coffee.
We are not lazy. We are the biggest and best-educated generation in American history and we want to work. What we, the students of this state, need are fewer burdens to degree completion, and more meaningful job growth so that there are positions available upon graduation.
The proposal our governor puts forward rewards only the advantaged without offering relief to students who balance several jobs just to stay afloat. If we truly want to improve higher education access and success, Gov. Martinez should invest in higher education and cultivate and education policy that works for all.
Jacob Robert Wolff
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