An open letter to PA. College Students from a fellow student - "Don't wait or it will be too late"
By Dave Kalis- a Secondary Education-English student at Kutztown University
"When education is no longer considered our primary tool for advancing up the mountain, we don’t just stop building new stairs…we start moving back down the mountain. The elevators fall into ruin. Soon we aren’t just sliding down the mountain: we’re falling down it, all of us. All of us, perhaps, except those privileged few up there on that glittering ledge. That’s what is happening right now. It’s what we’re seeing when Governor Corbett slashed the state budget for higher education a few weeks ago. By cutting over $330 million from the budget of the PA State System of Higher Education and over $395 million from financial assistance to college students (that’s you and me) through the PA Higher Education Assistance Agency, and additional cuts to major colleges like Penn State and Temple, Corbett’s making an attack on higher education. And attacks on higher education are more than just a bad idea; they’re a crippling blow to our society.
Higher education provides citizens with opportunities to learn a career. These people become the leaders of a new world. If we reduce the number of people who have the opportunity to participate in higher education, we reduce the number of educated people who will be able to serve as future leaders. We essentially reduce the pool of successful, smart, and able citizens and relegate many of them to a lower class in a nation that’s not even supposed to have a class system in place. Make no mistake, higher education and future leadership roles will still be available to some… but they will be the ones who can afford increased tuitions at state colleges or more exclusive (and more expensive) private schools. Those citizens without the financial means to attend either of those kinds of schools will simply not go to college, and are very likely to stay at the lowest levels of our society… at the bottom of the mountain.
Governor Tom Corbett is working hard to dismantle Pennsylvania’s future. To be clear, that’s not some vague, abstract future; that’s tomorrow. Your ability to attend college next semester is affected by these cuts. Tuitions will be raised, maybe your tuition. Entire majors will be cut from schools, maybe your major. Professors will be let go. Class sizes will grow. Even if you can continue to go to college, the quality of your education will be affected by these cuts. The quality of our shared future will be affected, too. We’ll start sliding back down that mountain, instead of climbing it like our parents did. The time to act is now. We have to stand our ground. We have to fight to even stay where we are.
Don’t wait to act. Go and write a letter to the Governor, call his office, email your friends and family and have them do the same. Let our government know how important education is to our future. Pay attention and get involved, join protests locally and at the Capitol, to make sure our voices are heard. Don’t wait, or it will be too late."
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