Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You can't have a competitive, egalitarian meritocracy if only some of your citizens have the opportunity for a good education.
Those who are able to afford to live in a neighborhood with 'good schools' will do so, knowing that a good education is the key to good opportunity for their children.
Growing up, I was encouraged to get a good education, get a real job doing something I enjoyed, and, should the opportunity present itself, consider public service as just that: a chance to serve, not an end in itself.
I think of it as a good opportunity to let, in particular, school kids know that this job and other interesting jobs in science and engineering are open to anyone who works hard in school and gets a good education and studies math and science. And that it's not just for a select group of people.
It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.
The difficulty is, Pell Grants are an attempt to do the right thing, and that is to give the low-income student an opportunity to access higher education, and that's a good thing. And welfare was an attempt to help those most in need. The difficulty is, often times a program is so successful that it grows and grows and grows and grows.