Quote:
Originally Posted by PhxDowntowner
If there's anything this country doesn't have, it's a higher education deficit. Proof = all of the college grads working at Burger King or as admins.
EDIT: we can substitute "Arizona" or "Phoenix" for "country", and it reads the same.
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I couldn't disagree more when it comes to AZ and Phx. Sure on the whole America's higher education system is the best and most widely spread of any country in the world. However when it comes to higher education in AZ you basically have 3 choices, ASU, UA, NAU. GCU is marginal at best and places like Prescott College are hardly on anyone's radar.
I'd recommend reading "Triumph of the City" by Edward Glaesar, he argues convincingly about how important it is for Cities/Metropolitan areas to be leaders in higher education.
I'm not wishing for Arizona or Phoenix to have more diploma mills, just the opposite! I wish ASU West and Poly could spin off into their own schools so ASU could reduce enrollment, increase costs and increase selectivity and quality. We need a multifaceted higher education with different types and sizes of schools for different type of people.
PHX & Arizona suffer terribly from "brain drain." People leave AZ for college and never come back. Graduates often stay near where their college was due to a large alumni network that can help them with employment. For every Sandra Day O'Connor that leaves for Stanford and returns, there are hundreds more that don't come back.
As far as Medical Higher Education goes there's been numerous studies that have shown that Arizona is already running short on Doctors. With the large Snowbird population continuing to age and huge amounts of rural poor (on Indian Reservations and the like) we're going to need more Doctors to keep up the pace.