A lot of you probably voted for Barack Obama recently on the promise of "Change We Can Believe In," an end to the Iraq War, national health care, job creation, alternative energy investment and his warm embrace of 21st Century technologies. Or maybe it was because of myriad other issues that you felt distanced him from the opposition. I look forward to his inauguration for the same reasons. However, you have probably never even heard of Obama's most important idea: the one that has the chance to actually turn America around, fight unemployment, revitalize the American economy and re-establish America as a global leader.
Obama's most important idea is the American Opportunity Tax Credit that seeks to make college affordable for all Americans. The universal credit ensures that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. All that is asked of recipients is 100 hours of community service.
So what? A one-time $4,000 dollar scholarship? Many of us have loans or scholarships in the tens of thousands of dollars and will accumulate debt potentially up to a hundred thousand dollars by the time we get out of graduate school. By comparison, $4,000 is hardly a drop in the bucket.
Its not traditional college students who will benefit the most from this new scholarship. Its everyone else: our neighbors, parents, aunts and our uncles. Consider the fact that Ohio's unemployment rate is 7.3 percent, or 435,000 people.
Many of these workers have dedicated their lives to learning a trade or becoming highly skilled factory or construction workers. With the amount of re-training that could occur in just the few semesters at a community college covered by the American Opportunity Tax Credit, these workers could be empowered with the tools needed to help spur America's green revolution and to fill technology and service jobs; areas where the economy is actually growing.
The head of the Xunlight Corporation in Toledo, which manufactures some of the most flexible, lightweight and efficient solar panels in the world in association with the University of Toledo, recounted a story to CNN in which a friend told him to get out of Toledo as quickly as possible and to set up shop in California where growth was actually possible. He didn't understand his friend because in Toledo he was surrounded by skilled and experienced workers who had been laid off by the auto industry, clamoring for work.
An investment in community college level education, such as the one Obama is proposing, would put these skilled workers back to work in fields that might require a greater knowledge of science and technology but would allow them to use the skills they already possess. It would also give people the footing they need to stay off welfare and out of despondency, rebuild Rust Belt communities and bring the U.S. economy into the 21st Century.
Four thousand dollars, a chip off the cost of higher education, is the difference between the life and death of our great state, our cities, our economy and our people.
Ryan Connolly is a freshman in architecture. He can be reached at connolly.51@osu.edu.
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