Let’s Make America Smart Again, by driving down the cost of US education fees and in the meantime we need to bring in millions of highly educated immigrants to fill the shortage, before will lose our preeminence in technology.
By Chris M. Ingram, LL.M., ESQ
During the industrialization of America from 1820-1870, long before computers, America’s strength came from its labor force and when I say “labor” force I mean manual hard backbreaking labor. If you’re going to build a Trans-American railroad you need fit laborers. Look at all of the buildings in New York City, the gateway to America; it was built on the backs of hard working, mostly immigrant laborers. America was made great, by its ability to attract immigrant laborers as far afield as China, but also from all over Europe. Not to be remiss, America was also made great on the backs of slaves too – Slavery was not officially ended until December 6th 1865, during the industrialization of America, under the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
If you were young, fit and healthy, America needed you to Make America Great. America had an entire infrastructure to build from scratch and it was going to take millions of immigrants to build it.
My point is that the industrialization of America was powered by immigrant labor and the ownership of slaves. However, my overall point is two-fold. Firstly, what made America great is not only the fact that it took immigrant and slave labor to make it great, but secondly, this coming together of immigrants and slave labor from a vast array of countries, who poured in their blood, sweat and tears, created an unshakable multi-generational, melting pot of ideas and cultures that literally made America Great. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about this. Every immigrant, slave and subsequent freeman, paid an enormous price or sacrificed their futures so that their future generations could have a better one and so they did. America, truly became the New World.
Steve Wozniak (left) and Steve Jobs (right) founders of Apple Computers at the forefront of the Computer revolution.
Let’s fast forward 100 hundred years from 1870s to the 1970s and here we see a completely different industrialization of America. Here, I’m referring to the technological industrialization of America which began, in 1977 when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak invented the first home computer. So, one hundred years earlier, the primary “skill” required to make America Great was the ability to attract millions of young and fit workers to literally build the entire infrastructure of America from the ground up, virtually no education was required. Thus, the primary commodity to make America great was to be young and fit to do back breaking work. Today, in order to Make America Great Again through the technological industrialization of America, the primary skill-set is a lot different, its education, more specifically, its advanced education in what we now call S.T.E.M, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Being just young, fit and healthy will not cut it this time. America needs a massive labor force of brain power and once again, it looks like we’re going to have to import that too, like we did brute strength 100 years earlier.
So why can’t Americans alone meet this need? Well, in 1970, the average yearly college tuition for a four-year degree was just $358 per year. Typically, your entire four-year degree would cost $1,561. [price of gas then was just 36 cents a gallon]. So, when many people said that they worked their way through college and left college with no student debt, it’s easy to see how they could raise $358 per year to cover it.
Let’s fast forward to 2016-2017 where a typical undergraduate education at, for example, Penn University, an undergraduate degree will cost you $45,556 per year, plus room $9,450, plus an annual meal plan at $5,086 = $60,092 per year. Then, if you want to go on to graduate school to do an advanced degree, and a lot of S.T.E.M. education programs only really kick in at the advanced degree level, at Penn University tuition graduate education starts at $32,286, plus room and meals. So after you’ve spent $60,092 per year x 4 = $240,368 to get your BA degree, you might then spend another $64,572 – $96,858 (excluding housing and food) to get your MA or PHD.
So, to really compete in the STEM world, amongst the best, your American education might set you back over $300,000.00.
US students embarking on promising careers, sure, maybe? A life time of student – debt, sure, maybe?
As the saying goes “Houston, we have a problem”. The main driver in the technological industrialization of America is advanced education in STEM and over the last 40 plus years, the cost of education in America has sky rocketed from $358 per year to $60,000 per year, making almost impossible for American kids to afford. Even now, I’m looking at the figures and scratching my head asking, is this really true? Sure, you can find cheaper schools (and more expensive) than Penn University, but are those cheaper schools going to be competitive nationally or globally?
Most smart American kids simply cannot take on $300K for college. By the way, when I went to University in 1991-1998 in England, my BA was free, in fact at that time on top of my free University education the government also gave me a living allowance. My Law School (Post Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice) fee was 5,000 UK Pounds and my LL.M was just 500 pounds. If the UK were not so generous at that time, I would not have been able to afford go to college.
According to the US Census Bureau 2014, the median house income in America across all jobs was $51,939 per year. So, if you have two working parents making a combined income of $100,000 per year, how can they afford to find $60,000 per year for one child’s college education much less two kids. Even if they are able to find lesser schools and are able to reduce the costs by half to $30,000 per year per child, it’s still $60K per year. Although there are many financial aid and student loan programs out there, too many US students simply do not want to be saddled with a life time of debt repayments, when after that they have to find money to cover a mortgage payment, plus the inevitable car payment. Something has to give. If we want our kids to have a chance in this technological era, education costs has to be brought back down to the levels of the 1970s. How can today’s American student facing college even compete with their parents?
As parents, we certainly want the best for our children, but can we really afford to send them to college? Alternatively, how do we feel knowing our kids could be in student-loan debt for decades? Hmmm.
Today, we have a chronic shortage of Americans with the education they need to take part in the technological industrialization of America. US companies are now having to scrambling to bring in the educated talent they desperately need from outside the US because the Americans entering the work force are simply not smart enough. Truth is, they are plenty smart enough, they simply cannot afford to go to college or stay in college long enough to get to that advanced level. A four-year college degree on its own, is simply not enough these days.
Unless, America can find a way to bring down the cost of education in the US, it will be once again down to the educated immigrant community from around the world to come in to fill the need. From the founding of America to this very day, immigrants have always answered the call to Make America Great Again.
Yes, let’s make America Great Again by Making America Smart Again, it’s going to take millions of the best and brightest from around the world. We cannot afford to lose this one.
If we want to Make America Smart Again, the answer is simple. Fund education. Education is the gift that just keeps giving. As the old proverb goes, ‘give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him how to fish and you feed him for a life time’. I’d close by saying, at least make it affordable for them to learn how to fish and they will do the rest.
Immigration Law Offices of Chris M. Ingram
US Immigration Law Offices of Chris M. Ingram
Chris M. Ingram LL.M., ESQ – Immigration Attorney
Admitted in New York.
Practice Specializing in US Immigration Law
401 Wilshire Boulevard, 12th Floor,
[Cross Streets 4th and Wilshire]
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California 90401
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About Chris M. Ingram., LL.M., ESQ.
Attorney Chris M. Ingram is originally from Northampton, England. Chris M. Ingram Graduated with a BA(Hons) Degree in Law from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK in 1994, Chris M. Ingram then went on to the De Montfort School of Law in 1996 and graduated with a Post Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice (PGDLP). In 1998 Chris M. Ingram graduated with a Masters of Laws and Letters (LL.M) from Huddersfield University, UK. and after relocating to the U.S. Chris was admitted to the New York State Bar in 2003. Chris has been a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association since 2004.
Having gone through the US Immigration process personally with his wife and three children, Chris M. Ingram founded his own law firm with the clear mission to make sure every client had the very best US Immigration experience possible. To begin with, Chris M. Ingram set about writing and creating the very best comprehensive US Immigration education platform so that every visitor had the opportunity to discover in their own time and at their own pace their US Visa, Work Permit and Green Card options for free. Today, the Law Offices of Chris M. Ingram’s website has over one thousand pages of content and hundreds of education videos and testimonials to inform and inspire every visitor. We are adding new content all the time.
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