Used sparingly and with precision, public investment can make a crucial difference. No where is that more true than in education. For 30 years now, the state has been making exactly the right kind of investment through the R.I. Higher Education Assistance Authority, a state-funded college financial aid program that has granted $227 million since its founding.
At the well-deserved celebration of this anniversary on Nov. 16, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri said that he received annual grants of $1,000 when he attended Brown University in the 1960s.
However, that $1,000 covered nearly half of his tuition, room, board and fees, while today’s RIHEAA’s grants of $1,400 per year barely cover 3 percent of Brown’s $47,476 price tag.
But the challenges go beyond access. Failures in grade school and high school, starting with low expectations, plague lower-income students. Many who are able to piece together the resources to attend college are simply not prepared. The state has been attempting to address that problem with new graduation requirements, but more needs to be done.
A few special programs encourage students to push beyond the curriculum and problem solve in creative and innovative ways.
One example is the FIRST robotics competition, part of a national program that engages children from ages 9 through 18 in creating robots to perform specific tasks. A preview for the next competition takes place tomorrow (the actual contests are in the spring) at New England Institute of Technology in Warwick.
The sponsors of the competition are looking for more investment from the business community. It may just be the kind of investment that would pay dividends down the road.
