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In our country, at present, higher education is under scanner. American prosperity has always depended strongly on higher education which in turn has enjoyed bi-partisan support. Higher education is definitely the foundation any strong society stands upon and a robust public education is the wellspring of scientific invention and social innovation.

There are many debates going on regarding these assumptions. Influential critics and powerful politicians are giving suggestions that could practically derail progress and endanger the future of our higher education system.

For example, just consider what Governor Mitt Romney; our presidential candidate has to say on this issue. Sitting from a high pedestal that only a super-rich person like him can afford to, Romney is quite ignorant of the extreme hardship and suffering our majority of university and college students have to go through in order to land a good education.

Till recently, he did not have any problems with students taking out huge loans and was also for doubling of loan interest rates. Mr. Romney, in an unscripted moment, went to the extent of telling a student that nothing was going to come in a platter and that she had to just shop around to find the best interest rate in this competitive market.

Responding to another question, he advised students to start business borrowing money from their parents or to find an affordable college. To hard working students and their families, such advice is paramount to insult. Public university students are stigmatized through such comments.
Most students are not from rich families who can simply afford to take student loans without any problem. Many of them take full loads of courses even as they work two or three jobs to pay for them.

Their social class position shapes their financial circumstances. Banks lend them loans with an aim to get good returns on their investment rather than with a focus on the student’s professional future. Our social mobility is deeply undermined by this situation and understandably most of us today are highly cynical of any rags to riches story.

Mr. Romney feels young people should be left to fend for themselves and it is not for the government to invest in them. His views are the themes of Talk Radio discussions and his opinions have also found their way to the New York Times.

Now, the question is whether public higher education is where young people are taught how to think or a place where they are endowed with skills. If students are just equipped with skills in keeping with the ideas of our short sighted politicians, we will have a population of highly skilled workers with minimal or no capacity to think.

They will just be capable of following instructions like automatons. They will have no idea about how to connect those instructions to a broader social or technological context. We must train our youngsters to think creatively, not creative only in terms of social sciences and humanities but also in terms of being educated enough to think, invent and innovate.