Today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel featured an op-ed piece by State Senator Duey Stroebel (R – Cedarburg) concerning a brain drain from Wisconsin as recent college graduates leave the state upon graduation.
Senator Stroebel is bemoaning the fact that recent graduates have left the state at the rate of 14,000 over the four year period of 2008 to 2012. He clearly understands the economic issues related to losing our most talented and discusses it at length. I was starting to become quite impressed until we got to the GOP style kicker at the end:
With these issues in mind, I recently unveiled a bill that seeks to entice the best and brightest high school students to remain here for college and, ultimately, work here and put down roots after graduation. Many of these students will be the next entrepreneurs, job creators, benefactors and leaders who will shape the future of our state. To accomplish this, my bill would restructure the current Academic Excellence Higher Education Scholarship, which is awarded to high school seniors statewide finishing at or near the top of their class.
Untouched since the early 1990s, the program has becoming increasingly less effective in accomplishing its goal of keeping the best and brightest here. Under the proposed changes, the scholarship amount would be increased to equal the tuition and fees of the in-state college or university attended, or to the tuition and fees of UW-Madison if the student attends a private university. The key, however, would be that 50% of the award would be in the form of a traditional tuition scholarship, and the other half would be distributed to the student in the form of a tax credit that may be used to offset state income tax obligations for the first five years following graduation — but only if the graduate lives in Wisconsin and earns a majority of his or her income in-state.
A tax credit?
Didn’t it ever occur to you…that while demeaning educators and taking millions of dollars out of the budget of the University of Wisconsin system…that it might just be kinda hard to convince students you mean something when your actions are saying exactly the opposite?
Want to staunch the brain drain? Bolster the reputation of the UW System by investing in it. Make tuition affordable by returning state funding to previous levels. Help to make student loans affordable so that our best and brightest can attend and graduate and afford to stay here.
And for crying out loud, invest in PUBLIC education so that our best and brightest are ready and able to go to college!!
This…a million times this!
I really wish Republicans like Duey Stroebel would wake up and realize that tax cuts/credits aren’t the solution to every problem in Wisconsin, especially considering tax cuts (and the resulting cuts to public education & the UW system) are what led to the mess we’re in now.
What examples over the past 20 to 30 years can anyone point to that would suggest increasing funding to the UW would result in them lowering tuition?
It sure sounds like a great idea but in every budgeting cycle I’ve ever seen or heard all administration’s do is ask for more funding or threaten cuts. I’ve never heard a school administrator evert ask for school funding to actually cut tuition.
Read the comments section following DOOOOOey’s piece. Every commenter on that site has more intelligence in their little finger than DOOOOOOey has in his big bald head. Many of those commenting shared personal stories on how they have ACTIVELY encouraged their children, all successful college graduates to RUN from Walker’s Wisconsin as soon as they left college. One commenter, a former physics teacher put it best when he said that he & his wife plan to leave Wisconsin to all those who have ruined the state. Just about sums up my feelings for Wisconsin.
The majority of Wisconsin voters put Walker and his Rethuglican Legislative allies in office, and voted in a CORRUPT State Supreme Court. It will take generations to clean up the mess that Wisconsin has become. Life is too short to waste energy trying to clean up the corrupt cesspool that is Walker’s Wisconsin. Better to move to a state free of the stench of corruption that Scott Walker has turned Wisconsin into. I am working hard to prepare to leave Wisconsin ASAP.
Why not a model where college students get four years of free tuition at public universities, but then have to remain in the state for a minimum of 10 years after graduation? Or is that too progressive a solution?
Because that would be too involuntary servitude -ishness of an idea. 13th Amendment does away with such ideas–or haven’t you ever read the Constitution?
How is that involuntary servitude. A student wouldn’t have to take the money if they didn’t want the strings attached. Sounds like a choice to me.
I’m with the Dr on that one Doug. Put into that contract,first, a guarantee of a job being there for the person upon graduation, one that is using the degree procured and then a job that pays the graduate enough to more than just subsist and you’d be on your way something that is a potentially a reasonable situation for the student to consider. Just a few of the immediate concerns that came to mind reading this.
Good question though.
Worse is the underfunding of public education by Walker as voiced by 35 southern Wisconsin high school principals. Walker’s cuts at this level will have a negative effect on our high school students effort to pursue a college education.
http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/pat_schneider/high-school-principals-tell-scott-walker-his-funding-cuts-produce/article_cfedd485-d794-50b3-b72b-7e7b82b26ac4.html#utm_source=host.madison&utm_campaign=/email/captimes_news/&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline
Walker is “aborting” their public school education and thus “killing” their future economic life as an adult.
It seems to me that Walker, by his fiscal short changing of funding public schools is violating the State Constitution on the right of Wisconsin children to a public education. I believe it implies a quality or adequate education going far beyond a basic “reading, writing and arithmetic” at the K12 level.
“Oh the humanity!”
thanks for the reminder about the letter from the principals! I have a post started on that topic but have been procrastinating on finishing it. I am enjoying summer!
Submitted here for, the uninformed, the deniers, the destroyers such as Walker and his enablers, Fitzgerald, Vos, and other legislators who have sold this basic Wisconsin right for our children, guaranteed by our forefathers, to satisfy their “debt” to Koch and others of their ilk, and last but not least submitted on BB to. read, recall, remember, and refresh our conscience:
“Wisconsin Constitution
Article X. Education.”
http://my.execpc.com/~fedsoc/wi-con10.html
Lest we forget our Wisconsin progressive roots!