Students pay price as society forgets higher-education's value

As the Washington Legislature comes to a close on this session, there are new narratives and enduring myths about funding for our state's colleges and universities.

Perhaps the most ubiquitous charge is that students should pay more for college - and its corollary that earlier college graduates paid their own way as well.

It should be noted, and this will be either radical or rote for some, that the pursuit of higher education was originally perceived as having a public purpose; that a degree better prepared those who attained it for navigating the world at-large and created a more civic-minded person, an ideal that has contributed to making our country the envy of the world over.