Square two

Webber Energy Fuels and its president, Larry Mahaney, have been extraordinarily generous to Maine students over the years, contributing more than $1 million to scholarships and other education programs. A recent $300,000 research grant continues that highly commendable record.

It’s not the gift, but the focus of that research that’s troubling. Not because there’s anything wrong with studying the subject under consideration, but because the conclusion is already known. The problem with the Maine Aspirations Benchmarking Initiative, a 10-year project directed by the University of Maine/Maine Principal’s Association Research Partnership, can be summed up in the popular cliche, “been there, done that.”

Fretting about the low aspirations of Maine students — specifically, why they rank so high on national standardized test scores and in high-school graduation rates and so low in college attainment — has been one of the state’s few real growth industries in the last 15 years or so. Spending a decade surveying every sixth- through 12th-grader in Maine public schools will keep a lot of surveyors out of mischief, but it won’t tell Maine anything it doesn’t already know.

The cost of college is too high for most Maine families and the state’s financial-aid programs are too meager. Too few students see in their own homes the benefits of a college education. Bold legislative initiatives to energize Maine’s lagging economy through infrastructure upgrades, increased funding for research and development or education improvements are inevitably pared down to lip-service level.

Mostly, Maine jobs simply don’t pay enough. Maine students are smart and they do especially well in math. They know that tens of thousands of dollars in college debt cannot be repaid with the $25,000-a-year job that awaits after graduation.

In short, the problem isn’t the low aspirations of Maine students, it’s the low aspirations of the entire state.

Just a few symptoms of Maine’s (not Maine students’) low aspirations: Per-capita income has been last in New England for years and the gap is widening, yet there is no comprehensive plan to do anything but preserve the status quo; a ranking of dead last among the states in investing in research and development, yet there are no truly energetic advocates among the state’s political leaders for a modest $20 million bond proposal on the November ballot that would still leave Maine last, but at least pointed in the right direction; the last time low college attainment was on the public agenda, just before the last Legislature gutted a couple of promising measures, the issue quickly devolved into an argument over whether Maine ranked 47th or 38th.

Identifying the cause of a problem is the necessary first step to solving it. The cause of this particular problem is clear, although difficult to solve. It’s time to move on.

A good square two would be to find out what the other states that once had the same problem have done. Georgia, North Carolina, South Dakota, Iowa are but a few of the largely rural states that have been where Maine now is and that, by investing in themselves, have built economies that make getting a college education affordable and rewarding. Finding out how they did it would be well worth $300,000.

But this aspirations study no doubt will move forward and in 10 years researchers will have spent Mr. Mahaney’s wonderful gift and will have the answer to the central question: At what point do Maine’s highly motivated students give up on the future? Here’s an educated guess, free of charge: It’s when they recognize the reality that surrounds them.