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Our newest growth industry
by David Hoppe May 28, 2003
Much has been made lately of the deplorable state of Indiana’s economy. “Look out!” say the experts, we’re on our way to becoming the Mississippi of the Midwest. We don’t have enough leadership, we’re slow to embrace innovation and too easily satisfied. We’ve been content to coast on the dubious strengths of a manufacturing base, even after it was clear that manufacturing’s future was hitched to cheaper labor in other countries. But what if we were to wake up some gorgeous Indiana spring morning to find that we had a new growth industry in our state — one based on resources naturally occurring here and with an institutional infrastructure in every county already in place. This industry could employ thousands of highly educated professionals. It would provide extensive collateral opportunities for construction and building trades. Better still, it would be based on addressing a social need. Finally, as if all this were not enough, this industry would have the power to spawn countless offshoots, providing a myriad of goods and services designed to meet the increasing demands of our new prosperity. The growth industry I’m talking about is education. Those resources I mentioned are our children. While the leadership class in this state furrows its collective brow and tries to think up ways — from tax breaks to new highways — of getting more people like themselves to come here, the home-grown energy that could truly accelerate Indiana’s growth continues to be given short shrift. That energy is education, from preschool through postgraduate studies. Throughout the course of the last legislative session we heard the predictable lip service paid to the importance of education. This usually came in the form of that old bromide about how, for the state’s economy to blossom, the schools need to be producing employable kids. Schools, in other words, as training facilities. The current emphasis on testing reflects this approach. We’ve heard the predictable excuses, too. About how times are tough and money is tight; about how no one wants to raise taxes. And so education advocates staggered out of this session with the cold comfort that life as we have known it in most schools won’t get much worse — but it won’t get better, either. If there’s a ray of light anywhere, it shines on the life sciences departments at our universities. Millions of dollars will be invested in the hope that Indiana might become a center for this burgeoning field. Setting aside the fact that other states are already ahead of us in the race to command this lucrative niche, one can still question the wisdom of banking Indiana’s economic future on one, albeit multifaceted, market segment. Diversification, considered a cardinal virtue for individual investors, is surely no less important for a state’s economic outlook. Our disproportionate reliance on manufacturing should have taught us this. Indiana’s investment in the life sciences is smart, but it’s a micro solution to a macro problem. The true payoff of this initiative comes only if it takes place within the larger context of a meaningful and sustained investment in education for all Hoosiers — making education our state’s No. 1 growth industry. America has been in a quandary about education for years. No one seems to agree on how kids should be educated; what’s more, we can’t even agree on what an education should be. It wasn’t always this way. In the 1950s and early ’60s — the height of the Baby Boom — there was an extraordinary degree of consensus about what kids needed by the time they graduated from high school. Those students who went to college had a lot of intellectual knowledge in common with each other, whether they came from California, Massachusetts or Indiana. This isn’t to say there weren’t inequities in the system. Indeed, these were felt so deeply that schools began undergoing a major dismantling by 1970. Now, if you take three kids from as many different Indianapolis schools, let alone three schools from around the country, you’re likely to find a variety of educational experiences bordering on the incoherent. The first state to get a handle on how to create not a perfect educational system, but a system that works will catch the 21st century equivalent of lightning in a bottle. What business wouldn’t want to locate in a place known for outstanding public education? This state isn’t so large, our population isn’t so diverse that this scenario is unthinkable. If, as reported, we believe we can create a new education system for Iraq, we can surely build a model system in Indiana. Our issues are not logistical so much as questions of political will. To create an educational system that truly prepares kids for life means a serious financial investment. But it also means rubbing out the Kafka-esque bureaucracy and turf-ridden hierarchies that have become defining elements in the lives of teachers and school administrators. It also means supporting social services capable of building bridges between schools and the homes of disadvantaged kids. It’s no wonder, given the scope of what’s needed, that state leaders prefer to focus on projects like building a new research center in West Lafayette. Enhancing corporate-campus partnerships like that between Dow Agro and Purdue reflects the way the game is played in an increasingly trickle-down society. Yes, wealth will be created by such unions, but the farther one stands from the center of the action, the harder it will be to appreciate. Make education itself the action and a wealth of opportunity can reside in every citizen living in Indiana.
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