To the editor:

“My view” of Robert Lee’s recent Weekender column addresses certain valid and important points about America’s troubled higher education system of four-year undergraduate colleges and universities.

The first point is that college loans create a huge debt burden for very many college graduates that take up to 10 years to pay back, making financial life even much harder to afford once these graduates can become employed.

Second point, these government-sponsored loans impose a high interest rate, comparable to how banks charge interest on their loans for houses, cars, etc.

Third point, this college loan repayment crisis creates an overwhelming stress problem for the graduates and their families, whether the graduate can find acceptable full-time employment or not.

Fourth point, the college educators may or may not be succeeding in educating their college students, mainly due to a lack of discipline needed to impart or receive a college-level education successfully. This lack of discipline problem is shared by educators, students, and parents alike. As a result, America’s world education standing has fallen to 14th place. There are many reasons why American higher education is experiencing these problems beyond a lack of discipline.

On the bottom line though, becoming disciplined is a primary requirement for each individual student to survive the educational process. How or if that needed level of discipline is achieved is a crapshoot.

I’ve learned there are consequences, beneficial or harmful, for each and every choice one makes once they are in childhood, on throughout life. How well each child becomes disciplined depends on what happens in their home, school, and community over time. Lee’s column certainly makes discipline central to becoming educated.

In a follow-up letter, I would take serious issue with two very misleading and uninformed points Lee includes in his column. First, that those persons enrolled in the welfare system are getting better financial supports than the working classes and college students, along with other insinuating, insulting language. Second, that there are assumed numbers of college professors who are letting down their students by not instilling discipline, or “dummying down” the courses their students take from them.

John Robich

Rockingham

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