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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 20, 2000)
Editor in chief: Laura Cadiz Editorial Editors: Bret Jacobson, Laura Lucas Newsroom: (541)346-5511 Room 300, Erb Memorial Union P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403 E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu Thursday January 20,2000 Volume 101, Issue 79 Emerakl Bryan Dixon Emerald In the new global econo my, it has become conven tional wisdom that a good education is vital in the race to escape poverty. This is especially true in the United States, where technology has been driving the economic ex pansion of the 1990s, while blue-collar jobs have become marginalized and many are sent overseas. But does our system raise unrealistic barri ers to obtaining an education for a significant number of our young people? Are we raising new and more difficult barri ers against education just as it becomes more important for the health of our society and economy? It appears that Ore gon Taxpayers United leader Bill Sizemore is promoting an unwise initiative that will do just that. Seventy percent of Universi ty students work part or full time while attending school. In Oregon, college and univer sity tuitions have increased more than 90 percent since the passing of Measure 5, while fi nancial aid has only increased 82 percent from 1988 to 1998. Well over half of available financial aid comes in the form of loans, with the average undergradu ate owing about $16,000 by graduation. In contrast, if I un derstand them right, my friends from Germany have their entire tuition paid by the state and receive a living stipend as well. But is it really harmful to require our students to work their way through college? I started the five year architecture pro gram at the University in the fall of 1992. With tuition covered, I would have graduated in 1998, and I would be starting a family with a relatively secure job and income in my career of choice. Instead, due to the ne cessity to take a few years off to earn money to return to col lege, I’ll graduate less than a month before my first baby is bom, with questionable short term job prospects and, be tween my wife and myself, more than $30,000 in school debt. But does that really harm me, or the thousands of other students in similar situations, in lasting ways? Even though I’m convinced that I will rise to the occasion and will eventually pay off our debts while providing suffi ciently for my child, I believe that it does. The stress of trying to work while attending school full time has affected my health with depression, headaches and indigestion. But far worse, that stress, as well as sacrificing study time for work time, made it impos sible for me to give my all to my education and has fre quently caused me to just scrape by with the minimum of study time required to pass the next test. I have forgotten lower-level information and have been stuck relearning ba sics when I should have been applying them in advanced classes. I have essentially sac rificed the quality of my edu cation just to get it. For most people, working even 15 or 20 hours a week sig nificantly and detrimentally af fects their education. Requiring students to spend their free time working also means that they can’t be developing the friend ships and contacts among their peers that can help support them throughout college and their careers. They experience stress and sleep deprivation that makes it more difficult to retain the information they read in their studies, and they often don’t have time to study all the required material. And into the mix marches Sizemore, once again trying to take money away from higher education. According to Ed Dennis, executive director of the Oregon Student Associa tion, Sizemore’s new initiative “will cut more than $1.66 bil lion out of the general fund during the 2001-2003 bienni um, approximately a 14 per cent cut.” Tuition will in crease, while the funds available to run the various programs at the University are cut. In other words, education will be come more elite, less available and prob ably of poorer quality, while at the same time the FredM. economy requires education to be more available and of better quality. Is Oregon best served by making a college education out of reach for a large segment of Oregon's population? Al ready we have the second fastest growing income gap be tween rich and poor in the nation. I would suggest that Size more is pushing us in the wrong direction. It would be much wiser to ensure that funding is available for all prospective students who can pass an entrance exam to the University. If the German model is unrealistic for the United States, why not require a year of service in return for four years of college? That year could be spent in the military, rural or inner-city aid pro grams, the Peace Corps or re medial tutoring for college en trance exams. It’s time to rethink our entire approach to funding higher ed ucation. We should be doing all in our power to ensure that those who are capable have the resources available to obtain a good education without being saddled with enormous debts that will drag them down for years to come. Universal tuition may not be the answer, but de feating Sizemore’s initiative is definitely a good first step. Fred M. Collier is a columnist for the Oregon Daily Emerald. His views do not necessarily represent those of the Emerald. He can be reached via e mail at fmcollier@aol.com. Editorial Round-up The Iowa effect By Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover MANCHESTER, N.H. — There is a broad consensus among politi cal professionals that Bill Bradley performed poorly in the debate with Vice President Al Gore in Des Moines last weekend. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Gore cleaned his clock. The operative question now is whether the ripples from that per formance may affect the outcome in the New Hampshire primary that comes eight days after the precinct caucuses in Iowa. Confronted with a farmer plant ed in the audience by the Gore campaign, Bradley was stuck for an answer when Gore chided him for voting against a bill that would have provided federal money for the farmer and other flood victims in 1993. The vice president, Bradley said, was dwelling on the past when this campaign is about the future. A day later, the former senator from New Jersey came up with what appeared to be an effective response — that he had indeed voted for flood relief but that he and other Democrats, including Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, had op posed this particular version. This explanation came far too late, however, to erase the picture of Bradley clearly bn the defensive when it came to farm issues. It seemed to confirm new opinion polls showing Gore 20 points ahead in Iowa even when running slightly behind here [in New Hampshire]. Bradley still has 10 days to close the gap in Iowa. And there will be other debates in both Iowa and New Hampshire in which he may be able to regain the offensive he seemed to lose to Gore last week end. His campaign is being buoyed right now by new nation al polls showing him stronger than Gore against either Republican, Arizona Sen. John McCain or Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. And in the end, that is the card Bradley must play to win. Drug office sneaks message into prime time By Joanne Jacobs Knight-Ridder Tribune After a six-month investigation, the on-line magazine Salon (www.salon.com) has reported that the White House Office of Na tional Drug Control Policy is fi nancially compensating networks for inserting its anti-drug message into prime-time programming. It’s payola for propaganda. In late 1997, Congress funded a five-year, $1 billion anti-drug me dia campaign, demanding that broadcasters provide one free ad for every ad paid for by the gov ernment. Regular ad sales were slow, so the five major networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and WB — went along. But the buy-one, get-one-free deal quickly soured when e-com merce exploded, writes Daniel Forbes for Salon. Dot-com adver tisers were willing to pay full price for the time networks were giving away to community service ads. In the spring of 1988, a payola deal was struck: The networks would turn selected sitcoms and dramas into anti-drug commer cials. In exchange, they’d get back some of the ad time they owed the government and be able to resell it. Most networks have been send ing a copy of anti-drug scripts to the drug czar’s office for approval or rewriting, according to Salon. In most cases, writers and producers didn’t know their network bosses had sold script control. What’s alarming is when the government becomes the scriptwriter, manipulating public opinion with the public’s money. The secrecy makes it more sinis ter: If it’s OK to have the drug czar approving scripts, how come no body knew about it till Salon broke the story? “Big Brother is watching you,” George Orwell warned in “1984.” As it turns out: You’re watching Big Brother. College Press Exchange
