In deep contrast to creationist Paul LePage, Libby Mitchell would be excellent for education in Maine.
Mitchell said Maine schools need to emphasize science curriculum more.
“(We) need to make sure they get it and know that there’s a future for them,” she said. “Maine has a school of math and science, which has been very successful, but all of our curriculum needs to focus on that.”
Whereas LePage and the Republican party are hostile towards science, Mitchell recognizes its crucial importance to the future of the state. She knows that in areas of conservation and new technology (especially for clean energy) it’s going to take a lot of quality education. Maine, just like every single place in the entire world, needs a strong core of people who have highly specialized scientific knowledge.
Mitchell also knows that the answer isn’t to just give away degrees – which is precisely what LePage has suggested we do. It’s obvious to anyone remotely intelligent that the biggest obstacle to students gaining the knowledge they need to get high quality jobs is money: people can’t afford to go to college. Mitchell, seeing this overwhelmingly obvious fact, has a solution.
Maine has far too few citizens with a college degree: only 37% of Maine citizens aged 25 to 64 hold a college degree compared with the New England average of 47%. Creating a public/private partnership for a matching grant program to guarantee tuition for the first year at the university system, community colleges, or Maine Maritime Academy will expand access to higher education and degree completion. This will also help lifelong learners by giving people looking to make job transitions help in getting the education and re-training they need.
Rather than make it easier for people to gain degrees, Mitchell is going to make it easier for people to gain knowledge. If you’re a Maine citizen and you don’t want your degree to mean less and less because absolutely everyone can get one for virtually nothing, vote Libby Mitchell.
Filed under: News, Science | Tagged: education, Libby Mitchell, Maine governor, Paul LePage |
For the Sake of Science 
Another good idea, some problems of course, like with LePage’s suggestion, the one that stands out to me is:
Pays for the first year…. than what? If they couldn’t afford the first year on their own, what makes you think they will able to afford the next 4 years? That’s noting that it takes most people 5 years to complete a “4” year degree now.
The second issue I would bring up is rising costs. Why does tuition increase so often and by so much and what would either of the two candidates do to fix that problem?
One reason people drop out of high school is that they don’t think school is for them. The same reasoning is used by people who have enough sense to complete high school but aren’t sure about continuing. By creating a grant system that is vastly improved upon what is out there, more students will have the opportunity to attend their freshman year and realize that post-secondary school isn’t as overwhelming as they perhaps once thought.
This also reduces the overall debt at the end of 4 (or 5) years that students will have to face. This can mean $5,000 to $30,000 less debt upon graduation.
Mitchell isn’t addressing the whole problem, but she is addressing 1) the need to get students to go to post-secondary school and 2) the need to reduce overall debt students and parents have to face. LePage, on the other hand, just wants to give high school students degrees for doing half the work everyone else had to do.
One question I have for both of them is: “Where is the money coming from?” and I still disagree that they would compress the degree curriculum at all. Your assuming too much for the beginning of the idea.
I assume you have no objections if all the current requirements for both the high school diploma were met as well as all for an associates degree AND qualified people were used? If so than there is nothing but a small logistical problem to sort out.
You seem to think, like our clueless legislature, that Maine suffers from a lack of college graduates because we graduate too few of them. In fact, the problem is that most of our college educated young people end up finding a job in other states where business is encouraged. Libby Mitchell will bring even more of the same failed policies that she’s brought us for the past 30 years. If you want more college graduates in Maine, both home grown and imported, the business friendly policies endorsed by LePage are what we need.
That’s true but certainly rising tuition and the general cost of college is an issue as well. I like both of the candidates ideas, and they both have problems to work out.
Your right however, you can teach the kids and young adults all the “science”, have the strongest program in the country, the world but if there are no jobs for them when/if they graduate than off they go.
Maybe some kind of an incentive to work in Maine after college? or an incentive to business to hire graduates from within Maine?
That must be why LePage sent his kids to school in Florida (right after he and his wife got in-state tuition rates through their intentional, illegal acts).
Maybe they liked the schools there better, I couldn’t care less since its irrelevant. I might have gone to school someplace with nice beaches if I hadn’t had to stay here for the national guard.