Free college

I was listening to a talking head say that Hillary is offering inner city blacks a $15 minimum wage and free college tuition while Trump is only promising jobs. Taking a closer look at these students going to college, it easy to see that free tuition is not the answer. Many of them drop out of high school and many others have diplomas earned by grade inflation and just pushing people though. They are not prepared for college work. With free tuition these students could go to a community college part time and work full time if they were better prepared academically. I am not that familiar with the situation of blacks in the inner city but I have similar experience that I can relate to. In the early 70’s, I had many clients who were professors at the University of North Dakota and one them, was the man responsible for enrollment in the medical school. This was a time when affirmative action was causing many universities to re-evaluate their student body. The med school had no Native American students and the general population was 5 percent Native Americans. About 60% of these lived on reservations. This man set up a program to bring more Native Americans into the med school but he met with no success. At first he offered a free ride which included all expenses but he could not find anyone interested. Then he looked at getting Native Americans into college and he had some luck there but these students were not interested in a pre-med curriculum. Finally he looked to the neighboring states of Minnesota and Montana but didn’t have much better results. In the years that followed a program called INMED, Indians in medicine, was developed and slowly over time students were found and brought into the med school. This meant they had to take chemistry, physics, biology and math in college. Today about 20% of all physicians in the United Stated have graduated from the University of North Dakota. This same thing would work with inner city black kids but it would take a concerted effort and many years to succeed. While living conditions in the inner city are bad they are no worse than the situation on the reservation.