President Trump’s Education Cuts are a Disaster Waiting to Happen 

My office is in a startup incubator that my wife manages. I’m surrounded daily by people making a living in STEM fields, including augmented and virtual reality. I also serve as a communications consultant for economic development organizations and a large trade association of vocational educators.

I say all this because it illustrates how often I hear the words “tech,” ” STEM,” “future,” and “workforce.”

These conversations have never, ever included the following phrases:

“College costs too little. We should make it more expensive.”

“Teachers get too many breaks already. There is no way their student loans should be forgiven.”

“You know what the real problem is? Lenders. They are just too customer-service oriented.”

Never.

Yes, there are challenges in education. I am acutely aware of the ones related to the cost of college, having just sat through a recruiting event with my 17-year-old daughter a few weeks ago.

So without a doubt, some things are broken.

But none of the broken things would be fixed by Donald Trump’s proposed budget, which does away with federal subsidization of interest on student loans and eliminates the program that forgives loans for people who enter public service (including teachers)–among other education-related cuts. The proposed budget, coupled with Education Secretary Betsy Devos’ earlier decision to eliminate certain protections for borrowers, increases the challenges associated with getting a college education in an era where knowledge is the economy’s most important commodity.

Is the educational model in the United State badly in need of innovation?

Yes.

Is it innovative to do nothing other than take the existing model and make it even more expensive?

Obviously not–and that’s just higher education. K-12 education fares no better in the Trump budget, which includes provisions that eliminate funding for career and technical education, decreasing opportunities for students who won’t get a bachelor’s degree.

Here’s the thing: I have sat in meetings with business leaders where the lack of STEM education, programs focusing on the skilled trades, and a lack of job-ready graduates has been the only focus of discussion. This budget seems to completely ignore that.

But here’s the other thing: This didn’t happen by magic. The systematic gutting of publicly funded education–be it in elementary schools or in colleges–was done by officials we’ve elected, many of whom have received strong support from members of the business community who regularly complain about the lack of a prepared workforce.

But rather than hold ourselves accountable for the choices that have created this reality, we attribute the lack of young workers with the skills employers need to some innate defect within entire generations of people–and then double down with even more bad public policy.

That’s wrong. The innate defect isn’t found in the products of our educational policies.

The defect is our choice to continually reelect the people who don’t understand that a highly and broadly educated workforce is America’s best competitive advantage.

If we want more college graduates, we need to figure out ways to make college cheaper, not more expensive. If we want kids who aren’t a fit for college to have good jobs–and fill important needs in our workforce–we need to fund career and technical education.

If we want our companies and communities to be competitive in a knowledge economy, we need to invest in creating knowledgeable workers. Just saying we need more STEM workers or graduates in the skilled trades isn’t enough.

Whether you are a company or a country, a budget is an expression of your priorities. Companies that say they want to be competitive in an emerging field but don’t invest in research and development obviously don’t mean what they say. The same is true of countries.

If Trump’s budget were enacted, it would signal to the world that we really don’t mean what we say, and we have no intention of helping Americans remain competitive in a global, information-oriented economy.