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Sunday, October 30, 2005

The Opportunity Cost of Lost Opportunity

Education is smart:

When Children Are Left Behind, the Economy Is, Too, by Hubert B. Herring, NY Times: ...[W]hat if our educational shortcomings could be put in strictly economic terms, instead of being part of a humanitarian debate? What, in short, does it cost the nation when a child drops out of high school? ... The answer is hundreds of billions of dollars. Looking at taxes alone, the researchers calculated that federal and state income tax receipts would be at least $50 billion higher each year if every high school dropout had graduated instead. And billions more are lost, the researchers figure, to added health costs and increased crime.

We are hiring a new Provost and I was at a meeting last week to decide on questions to ask the candidates. The registrar, admissions director, and others directly involved in the admissions process were at the meeting and access to education came up as a potential question area. This brought up a general discussion of the access issue and when you hear those on the front lines of the admission process describe the battles they go through to maintain access to higher education, the registrar was particularly passionate in his description of how things have changed during his long association with universities, you cannot help but be moved to action.

    Posted by on Sunday, October 30, 2005 at 12:09 AM in Economics, Taxes, Universities | Permalink  TrackBack (0)  Comments (0)

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