Letters: Paying it forward on education

Re “Bigger education, better outcomes,” Opinion, May 24

Ronald Brownstein well documents this country’s worsening crisis in higher education and how it bodes ill for our future. He presents compelling statistics, to be sure.

But Jane Close Conoley, UC Riverside’s interim chancellor, sums up the root problem in a disquieting nutshell: the public is “pulling back from a notion that they should be … supporting the education of the next generation.”

Those loath to support higher education probably are too shortsighted and self-absorbed to appreciate Nelson Henderson’s timeless aphorism: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit. “

Edward Alston

Santa Maria

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