I'm actually in shock about how much negativity there is coming from democrats about

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. Keep in mind that different public universities have long had

vastly different costs.

When my older brother graduated from high school in 1960 in New York State, he'd earned a Regents Scholarship for colleges in New York. However, the cost of going to college there was enough that he was better off going to New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM, and enrolling in the co-op engineering program. My parents only had to pay his first semester costs, which weren't really too high, and then he would work one semester, take classes the other semester, and eventually graduate with a degree and a guaranteed job in the field. As it happened, he dropped out of college and enlisted in the army, but that program still exists. If you have a kid interested in any kind of engineering, check out New Mexico State.

Or check out New Mexico Institute of Technology in Socorro, which has an amazing scholarship program based on SAT or ACT scores, and are quite generous. There are probably other schools I don't know of out there that have similar things.

Something else. If a student is in any kind of science, they probably won't have to pay tuition or fees after undergraduate school. Whic is unfortunate for those not in science, but I'll elaborate. When my older son finally got his bachelor's degree (he'd had a rather checkered academic career to that point, which isn't pertinent here) and enrolled in a Master's Degree program at a university in a different state, he got a series of letters. I'm forgetting the exact sequence, but they went something like this: 1. Dear candidate, we are going to evaluate your residency since you reside in a nearby state. 2. Since you reside in the nearby state we will give you in state tuition. 3. Because you are now in state, and in a master's program, your entire tuition is hereby cancelled.

Wow. How amazing and wonderful. I will emphasize that this is what science students get. Alas, almost any other aspect of academia does not get this benefit.

And so I strongly believe every student should get what my son has gotten. Full forgiving of tuition and fees. They will still have to pay for rent and the like, but forgiving tuition and fees is hugely important.

I first went to college at the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1965. I had two scholarships of specific dollar amounts. Those dollar amounts would seem ludicrously small today, so there's no point in telling them. But I will say that one paid my tuition and fees, and the other paid for my books. Which meant that attending school there was completely affordable. As it should be for college students today.

Some years back I explained to my younger son that back when I first went off to college, at least where I lived, if you worked a minimum wage job, lived at home, and saved most of that money, you could pay most of your school expenses. He found that completely unbelievable.