The reasons for the lack of college attendance or degree completion by post-high school students is not because they lack community support, and expensive K-16 programs cannot solve the problem.

The situation exists because their parents didn’t go to college. It is almost impossible for a student to attend college successfully without direct support and influence from their parents, and it is a foregone conclusion that the parents who experience higher education themselves will, in turn, encourage their children to become successful college graduates.

Mills and shoe shops that were once the foundation of our economy have disappeared here in Maine. Our adult workforce desperately needs job skills retraining and higher education. Meanwhile, our computer-tech/high-tech industries are growing, yet we do not have qualified workers to fill those positions. We’re importing them from Europe and Asia instead. Higher education funding should be spent on adult education programs first.

Abolishing two-year degree programs, as the UMaine system is planning, will discourage a majority of potential adult college candidates from attending college, especially those commuting from rural areas of the state. We need to provide financial and counseling assistance to our adult workers in order to retrain our workforce. The rest will follow.

If we spend money to form lifelong-learning programs and partnerships between parents and their high school aged children, we will engender the support that they need from their parents in order to become our successful college students of the future.

Rene Aucoin, Rangeley

Copy the Story Link