Here’s a fun statistic: By the year 2010, 87 percent of new jobs in Oregon will require a college degree.
Chances are, this is a good thing for you. If you’re reading this paper, you’re probably a college student, which means that you probably also work and get some kind of financial aid. You’re probably accumulating debt now because you want one of those new jobs when you graduate.
The problem is that even though Oregon’s economy needs more college graduates, our schools are producing fewer than ever. We’re actually making college harder to attend. Many students today are faced with a tough choice: Rack up massive debt to attend college, or don’t go at all.
We have to make it clear to our legislators that we care about these issues. Students registered to vote in record numbers last fall, and that’s power that we should use now. Students from the UO and colleges around the state will descend on the state capitol on Feb. 22 to rally and lobby our legislators to implement the Shared Responsibility Model (SRM) for funding higher education. We can make tangible change that will affect us this year, and we need you to come along.
The Oregon University System’s own statistics say that to cover the cost of a university education, a student would have to work 48 hours per week. I don’t have to tell you that isn’t really a solution. And although students won a historic victory last legislative session when the state reinvested in the Oregon Opportunity Grant, the grant only covers 11 percent of the cost of education. The average Oregon university student graduates with about $20,000 in student loan debt.
There is some good news. The governor, students and institutions of higher learning have come together to create the SRM. The model defines, for the first time ever, exactly what a student can afford to pay for college.
Under the model, students and their families make the initial investment in their education. If they fulfill certain state requirements, the state and federal governments will step in to fill the “affordability gap” in higher education. The SRM would serve more than 20,000 new grant recipients and boost enrollment at our colleges by almost four thousand students per year.
When our parents attended college, they could expect to pay their entire university tuition by working a part-time job and getting some limited financial aid. As most of us know, that just isn’t how it works anymore. The Shared Responsibility Model represents a return to a time when any motivated student could get the education he or she wanted.
Unfortunately, we can’t count on legislators to fix this problem on their own. We can make sure that students get the funding we need for higher education, but not without making ourselves heard. Give us a call in the ASUO office (541) 346-3724 and get involved; together, we can win funding for higher education and make Oregon stronger.
Emily McLain is the ASUO State Affairs Coordinator