Well-rounded grads
To the editor:
All citizens should beware the tell-tale sign of decline in a society: the inability or unwillingness to support study of the arts, language, philosophy, etc. Let’s be clear. The university is not a vocational training center. The focus of a liberal arts education is to produce citizens that not only possess skills, but also are well rounded in their knowledge.
Nurses must take a humanities course, and chemists must endure Western Civilization. Even with my education to the doctorate level in chemistry, I know little about the law. Thus I’m not much of an industrial chemist without lawyers. Lawyers help me protect my work and make a living. I left the field of nursing due to the way nurses are treated, inability to unionize in Kansas to demand adequate nurse-to-patient ratios, and I had ideas about medicine and technology that I wanted to pursue.
The law school should create a biotechnology patent law program to help me make money and pay lots of taxes in Kansas, not close its doors leaving me without support and thus looking elsewhere.
If you want an economical way to increase the number of nurses in Kansas, support our excellent technical schools and community colleges in the state. They produce great LPNs and associate degree RNs, who begin working, and paying taxes, quickly, but always have the opportunity to pursue more education at the larger institutions. Well, if we don’t close them down.