TC expansion costs outweigh benefits

Regarding Gazette Editor Les Minor's opinion piece titled, "Cass voters have big question to decide," he addressed "Cass County residents opposed to Texarkana College's plans to expand services into their county"
That would be me.
He closed his piece with this question: "If you are a Cass County resident: What are you going to do to improve the odds?"
The answer is simple. We're not going to be suckered into giving our money away to a fiscally unstable institution for the sake of "feeling good" about having "higher education" in our community. The college board gambled with appealing to our emotions instead of our intelligence, but I'm confident that on November 8th, the polls will show we're not as dumb as the college board had anticipated.
I did a cost/benefit analysis, along with various feasibility projections. The results indicated the costs to Cass County, both individually and collectively, were very disproportionate to the benefit of the college. In short, we simply wouldn't be getting what we're paying for.
Many of us who are opposed to the proposal already know that individually, we'll be paying about $75 to $100 per year, on average. We know that high school students graduating high school and attending TC would potentially save around $3000 over two semesters. Breaking that down, that doesn't amount to much more than gas money over the course of two semesters, that they can pay back in taxes three-fold over the rest of their lives, along with their parents, their children, and their children's children, etc.
TC has liberally used the "gloom and doom" of the low education percentages in Cass County. The hard simple fact is the college's proposal will have negligible, at best, effect on those numbers. They are metaphorically trying to sell us a car we can't afford just because it gets a little better fuel economy and gas prices are rising.
They have ridden a fine line between creative description and fraud in their advertising when they refer to the difference in cost between in-district and out-of-district tuition as being "more affordable." While it is "less expensive," it does not make it "more affordable." Let me give you this analogy: I can't go to the store with $50 and purchase a $100 side of beef. If that side of beef is on sale for $80, it's 20% less expensive, but it is not any more affordable.
The college is offering to purchase and renovate a building so that various "certificate" programs can be offered here locally. That would sound good to us because there's nothing like it here, but what are they offering? Welding (using some big fancy name, of course), truck driving, vocational nursing, and cosmetology. Those are great skills to obtain for an individual looking for work elsewhere, but not here! The market is saturated in each of those fields. You can tell us we need oxygen. We know we need oxygen. But, you'll be hard-pressed trying to sell us oxygen because we already have plenty.
It's nice that Minor mentioned his conversation with Mill Manager Matt Borbour at International Paper. I live between Atlanta and Douglassville, and it is closer to drive to IP from Texarkana than it is my house. Texarkana has the college, so arguing that International Paper was suffering due to lack of an educated workforce didn't exactly come off as a convincing. The fact is, there are not many high-paying jobs that require a degree in this county, and those few jobs that do require a degree are quite competitive with one major exception.
Minor expressed, in his opinion, it was less clear of what we do want. Let me provide some clarification.
The majority of jobs in Cass County that require a degree are teaching jobs for the local school districts. TC isn't offering education degrees or teacher certifications at the campus they're proposing to open here. We have a significant shortage on certified teachers here. Getting a certificate in welding, truck driving, vocational nursing, or cosmetology isn't going to do anything to fill that need for us. I'm aware of the education requirements and the fact that all of those requirements cannot be met by attending TC, but if they wanted to "partner" with us for higher education, they didn't wisely choose the appropriate educational paths to meet our needs.
Then, there's risky investment in TC we have been asked to make. While the current administration has made great strides in improving the fiscal responsibility of the college, they haven't established enough of a track record for financial stability to be considered a wise investment. There are many voters who view this proposal as a "bail out" for the college. The foundation didn't help matters with the excessive mailings they sent to us trying to convince us how wonderful this proposal would be for us. They came off as desperate to get our tax money.
I could go through all of the "what ifs" in this shabby proposal, but it's very late in the game for that, and much of it has been discussed ad nauseum with no real conclusion beyond speculation. What we do know is it's too much of a gamble being committed to paying the taxes indefinitely without any guarantees we'd continue receiving the services locally. Many of our high school graduates have gone to college before this proposal, and we're smart enough to know that percentage won't change whether this proposal passes or not.
This isn't a social issue, it's a financial one. I don't have a college education, but I have common sense and I can do basic math. I'll close by referring to my earlier metaphor: Would you be willing to commit to making payments on a car worth half as much that you wouldn't know, for sure, you'd get to keep?
Jerry A. Goodson
Atlanta, Texas