But I am going to put some pressure on Congress to answer for a deficiency in support of America’s future scientists and engineers—my peers. In a world transformed by global markets and emerging competition from countries like China and India, we must not become complacent in our ability to innovate. This requires a commitment to both research dollars and intellectual capital. President Jackson and other whistleblowers on the topic have alerted our national leaders to a brewing storm that involves a gap between our nation’s technical workforce and our nation’s technical needs. As students at one of America’s premier technological universities, we are among a converging pipeline of just 17 percent that receive a technical degree in a nation that requires almost twice as many.

I applaud President Bush for elevating discourse on the topic in his State of the Union address last week and by unveiling the American Competitive Initiative through the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Compared to the Clinton years when R&D spending in America literally remained flat, Bush has made significant increases that today account for roughly one-third of global research and development spending. Clearly progress is being made by this administration to ensure our nation’s competitive edge, but the rest of the world isn’t standing by.

Our ability to compete eco­nomically requires a stronger focus on education beginning at an elementary school level and extending to higher education. While the ACI seems to offer a number of solutions to better equip teachers and improve our education system, there is a lack of financial support for students our age. It doesn’t matter how qualified students are in math and science coming out of high school if they can’t afford to pursue a technical degree in higher education.

College tuition is soaring, and grant levels aren’t keeping up. Just last week the House passed cuts on the order of $11.9 billion to the student loan program, including higher fees on student loans and higher interest rates on parent loans. The national budget only allows for 0.5 percent of the overall budget’s expenditure on higher education, yet 30 percent of the discretionary budget cuts were in higher education spending. Although I believe it is the intention of the Bush administration to help students by increasing Pell Grants and cutting out inefficiencies in student loans, more and more students will now have to work part-time, while taking on ever greater levels of debt to pay for college.

It doesn’t help matters when colleges are priced out of reach, either. According to recent trends, the cost of attendance at Rensselaer—like many of its market basket peers—has increased by roughly $2,000 a year. Financial aid does not keep up with this, and in turn, some students have no other choice but to drop out, unable to sustain the burden of classes, work, and debt. With the “quiet crisis” looming, this is a travesty, only made worse by documented cases that prove this very phenomenon.

To offer some sort of reassurance to the Rensselaer community, I have met with members of President Jackson’s administration and have full faith that they will do everything in their power to keep the cost of a quality Rensselaer education affordable and accessible to America’s future scientists and engineers.

While they do their part, we will do ours. The RPI Student Senate’s Student Advocacy Corps and multiple student organizations like it are lobbying Congress on a state and national level for greater discretionary spending in support of higher education.

Ensuring America’s compe­titiveness requires a team effort. From the president of the United States to the president of the student body, we all have a job to do. Even AARP members can help.