THE PUBLIC MIND: EDUCATION BENEFITS ALL, NOT JUST THE RECIPIENTS

To the Editor:

Those of us connected with Southeast Missouri State University are gratified by your editorial of March 6 in which you argue that the university, despite a recent tuition increase, is still a good educational value.

But your injunction to "look at student fees as a true user tax" is about as short-sighted as it is possible to be. Of course, each student profits from his or her education, but to maintain, as you did, that students are the only, or even the primary, beneficiaries of a college education is to be truly myopic.

Does not the state as a whole benefit when its citizens are well educated? Even in a narrow economic sense it surely does. It takes expertise to run businesses, to cure disease, and to develop the technologies capable of making life better. Where does that expertise come from if not from the ranks of the educated? Not only that, but more educated citizens tend to earn more income and to pay more in taxes. There can be no question that a nation's educational standards are directly related to its standard of living.

And if we go beyond economics to consider the incalculable value of opening minds and permitting individuals to fully realize their human potential, it is abundantly clear that the state has a vested interest in the education of its citizens. The true genius of America is that it has always recognized that. This nation long ago rejected the elitist notion that education is only for those who can afford to pay for it themselves. That view was rejected because our nation's founders knew that a good education was not only of benefit to the individual but that a widely educated citizenry was in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Two thousand years ago Aristotle observed that "the fate of empires depends on the education of youth." The Southeast Missourian, which rightly sees its mission as partly one of public education, should recognize that the observation is no less true today.

Thomas B. Harte

Cape Girardeau