Paul lived in a country that had fallen from 30th
in the world of an educated populace to 51st. The
leaders of the country, seeing that the problem
could only get worse, proposed a radical solution
that had proven quite successful so far. Students
in this country's history had mostly relied on
student loans to finance their higher education in
the hopes of a large paycheck later throughout
their life. Many changes to the system had been
proposed and enacted yet many were left with
decades of debt. What was happening was seen as a
chance to recover wasted talent who often left the
university or college system within the first two
years. It took many proposals cobbled together
over many years until finally the outline of a
plan was ready to be put into place. If the stress
of having a student loan hanging over their head
was causing burnout and early dropout rates, the
solution then was to eliminate the student loan
program.
What was proposed as a replacement was something
called reciprocal education. That is, enough
resources were committed to the program that a
person's education of their four-year degree would
be waived if they were to mentor an incoming
student for the first two years of their degree.
Students could still pay for college and avoid
that so that part of that commitment was covered
by the many who only wanted to go through four
years of college. The rest could attend classes
with those they were mentoring along with an
additional two hours at the school afterwards to
assist with homework. The current program to also
waive the price of education for teaching
low-income students was kept in place for those
seeking an education degree. Each student and
mentor combination had a professor overseeing how
they were coming along and a panel would meet
weekly to review the result of each team's
progress. The results being seen after the
program's inception justified everything that had
been poured into the program to this point.
Test results began to rise as did student
enthusiasm from the shared experience of someone
learning with them. Indeed what was happening was
that the mentor was refreshing their early
education in the subject as those doing the
mentoring only helped those in their same field
and same sex. The mentors made the minimum wage
for each state and could get additional jobs after
school to supplement their income. The strongest
return in immediate results were the improved test
scores as personal learning from the mentors on
how best to retain information and take tests was
paying off. Another benefit seen from the program
was that the teachers would have handy teacher
aides ready to explain further on a particular
topic that they consider their specialty. Dropout
rates dropped precipitously due to the desire of
the students to make their mentors proud. The
program was so successful in fact that it was
incorporated into other facets of life.
Soon, trade schools began a similar program where
after an apprentice had advanced to the
professional level, they could waive the price of
their apprenticeship through two years of helping
a new apprentice began their career in the trade.
The success of the program in universities
attracted better trained teachers excited for a
new challenge which still accepted foreign
students who helped pay for more of the program.
Across the entire educational spectrum there were
new changes taking place which lifted up the
country in the ranks where they had been dropping.
So what about Paul? He was the first person to
take part in the program and many of the bugs were
worked out from what he went through. It wasn't an
easy start but had a spectacular end of that
beginning with the country back up in the 25th
position in the world educationally. Psychologists
were still writing books about what happens when
you replace owing something a financial
institution with owing something to a person who
helped you through a hard time.
