Kenji Hosokawa's column ["Higher Education for the Leisure Class," The Dartmouth, March 2] was very hurtful to many students. Although I agreed with many of his observations on skills acquired and the signal of a degree, I do not agree with his basic premise that poor people would be better off in technical training. Just looking at the idea of human capital in general, do we all have to strive to maximize our worth in terms of dollars and productivity? Is that the value of being human?
How productive am I when I write a poem or sing a child to sleep? How happy would I be with life maximizing my profit-making ability by crunching numbers as an investment banker (not to say that it can't be enjoyable; it's just not for me)? How do you measure productivity? Must a poor person with a poor education necessarily be excluded from the opportunity of a liberal arts education just because they wouldn't do it "as well" as we would at Dartmouth? What if they can pull it off at a less competitive university? Why deny them that opportunity?
It is true that many poor districts have schooling that is sub-par, sometimes due to allocation of resources that favor the wealthy. This schooling makes it more difficult for these students to be competitive enough for top universities. However, Hosokawa does not clarify his sentence "... the poor, and thus the unable who cannot earn enough to justify purchasing the signal, would be better off receiving technical training, not 'liberal learning,' to build their human capital." What about the competitive poor students? He mentions at the end of his article that this isn't a concern with need-blind institutions. This may be true at Dartmouth, but what about Brown University, which isn't need-blind? What about institutions that can't afford need-blind admissions, those not at the very top? If his line of argument is true, then poor people may on average have a less competitive edge on the top top schools, but what about those lower ones that have less money to fund qualified and competitive students? Students that may not be qualified for Dartmouth, but may be for a lower-ranked school, should have the opportunity to attend. Public assistance can help a student have an opportunity that they never would have had otherwise. Hosokawa's line of reasoning basically states that the poor should remain poor.
In addition, the idea that more money would not help public schools in poor districts is just wrong. Schools that cannot afford to buy books, pay teachers and repair their classrooms can always use more money. Saying that we spend more administratively on average in public schools than Japan and that we should forget the idea of further investment is not satisfactory. This may mean effective redistribution is necessary or that wealthier schools spend more administratively and are offsetting the average. In any case, it's not clear exactly how to interpret this statistic. This idea of preserving higher education for the rich is absurd as a statement in itself. The higher we raise education standards in primary and high school, the better educated our citizens will be. Further deepening a class divide will only tear this country apart. I agree that higher education should remain selective and only admit qualified and competitive students. However, Hosokawa's last sentence equates qualified and competitive with rich. "We must preserve higher education for the rich, slash red tape in public education for the poor and desist bringing more incompetent students to places like Dartmouth." Dartmouth does not bring in incompetent students, and incompetence is certainly not equated with the amount of money you have.
