What a weird and wonderful election system we have here in Oregon. Myriad initiatives and referendums spinning tens of thousands of signatures into ballot measures in a seemingly endless cycle.
This November, one of those initiatives comes from an unlikely place: The Oregon State Treasurer’s office. The Opportunity Initiative would establish an endowment funded by state investments from borrowed money. Debt payments would be made out of the state’s general fund, but the prospectus is that the returns on the investment will far outpace those payments, with money to spare for student aid for higher education and training.
The goal is that, over time, as this endowment builds, more low-income students will have a shot at a higher education or specialized vocational training. And consequently fewer students will be left behind for lack of funds.
This is critical, wide-angle thinking that we should be applying to many aspects of society. We’ve watched as the cost of housing, food and simply living have increased year after year, to both great profit of some and the detriment of many others. Meanwhile, wages have effectively declined, and middle-wage jobs have not returned to Oregon even six years after the Great Recession dug in its heels. In the absence of a meaningful housing trust fund, supported by our state legislature, safe, stable housing has slipped through the fingers of thousands of Oregonians. Poverty is rising with no correction in sight. One out of three Multnomah County residents is struggling to make ends meet, according to a new county report, and no amount of patchwork to the safety net will prevent more from falling into the same trap.
That’s the bad news, but the good news is we can fix it, and one example of what that might look like is the Opportunity Initiative.
The Opportunity Initiative is an attempt to stem the tide on the education gap before it’s too far gone. Oregon ranks 47th in the nation in terms of our per capita contributions to education, according to the state treasurer’s office. Our statewide investment has declined while individual costs have skyrocketed. Such an imbalance can have a domino effect — inadequate education, stagnant employment opportunities, a declining labor market and on downward. The opportunity to be trained and educated well for a career and gainful employment shouldn’t be a luxury of the wealthy. It can be a passport out of poverty; an economic equalizer. But today, higher education is pulling out of reach from even middle-class families, ever widening the gap, with many graduating with a lifetime’s worth of crippling debt.
This is not a perfect solution to the education funding mess, nor is it the only key to correcting the economic imbalance we live with across this country. It’s one proposal with great potential for years to come.¬
This article appears in 2014-07-04.