Jan 12, 2015 4 min read

With the U.S. economy gathering steam, Georgia should be booming.

New arrivals stream into the Atlanta metro area on a daily basis like Dust Bowl refugees, the state hacked away at taxes and won “business-friendly” accolades from movers and shakers, and yet, The Atlantic magazine pointed out a couple weeks ago that Georgia has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country. In November, it stood at 7.2 percent. The national unemployment rate announced last Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor was 5.6 percent.

In some Georgia counties, in fact, the unemployment rate exceeds 13 percent.

What gives? At least one reason so many Georgians are lingering on the dole is they don’t have the skills for the jobs that are being created in the Peach State. The magazine pointed out 60 percent of the expected jobs in the state will require certification or a degree beyond high school, while only 42 percent of workers in Georgia have such credentials. Home Depot, to cite one example, had to look elsewhere to fill some of its high-skill positions.

In Georgia – and in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and every other state – a plan announced last week by President Obama to make a two-year, community college education available tuition-free to all students could go some way toward closing that gap.

Unveiled at a community college outside Knoxville, Tenn., the proposal would have the federal government covering 75 percent of the cost for each student who enrolls at a community college, with states paying the remaining 25 percent. Students would have to maintain a 2.5 grade-point average, and the programs in which they are enrolled would have to result in professional certification or in credits that can be transferred to a four-year institution.

It would cost the federal government $60 billion over 10 years and save the average student about $3,800 in tuition costs annually.

Something similar was tried in Obama’s old stamping grounds of Chicago, and in Tennessee, where Republican Gov. Bill Haslam spearheaded what is called the Tennessee Promise, which will cover community-college costs for students using lottery proceeds starting this fall. It’s part of a statewide effort to increase the number of college graduates in the state from its current 32 percent to 55 percent by 2025.

Does Obama’s proposal have a chance of being approved by a Republican-controlled House and Senate? Stranger things have happened, but probably not. Even some of Obama’s supporters conceded it was more of a conversation-starter than something even the most cockeyed optimists in the White House expected to come to fruition. But it’s a conversation we need to have.

Even as the need for an education beyond high school grows ever more imperative as we move into a high-tech, knowledge-based economy, the cost of attaining that education has grown increasingly burdensome for many students and their families. A 2012 study by Bloomberg found tuition and fees to colleges and universities increased twelvefold since the late 1970s, far outstripping price increases in such areas as health care and food. The aggregate amount of student debt now stands at $1 trillion. This is an albatross around the necks of America’s twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, who delay buying homes and cars, getting married and starting families because of the staggering amounts they must pay down.

And it wasn’t always thus. The University of California system had free tuition to state residents until the 1970s. So did the City University of New York. Even if it wasn’t free, many state legislatures once provided sufficient funding for their colleges and universities so working-class and middle-class students had a ladder to social mobility that did not cost a king’s ransom.

There always seems to be money for the Pentagon or tax cuts. How about some for our students?