Lee Elci: All right. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. 38 minutes after the hour of 8 o’clock. I hope we have our good pal, Red Jahncke, on the line. Red you there?
Red Jahncke: I’m here.
Lee Elci: Beautiful technology, working perfectly, though not really on my end. But we’re making it work, Red. Good morning. What’s going on, my friend?
Red Jahncke: Hey, I’ll give you a choice of poisons.
Lee Elci: Okay.
Red Jahncke: To talk about state employees and their claims that they have made substantial sacrifices and concessions in the past.
Lee Elci: All right.
Red Jahncke: Or the concept that immigration should benefit citizens more than immigrants themselves. So, what’s going on in that vein in this state right now is an effort in the community college system, as revealed by the Connecticut Inside Investigator, Mark Fitch, to pay illegal immigrants to go to college. In an era when we have a nationwide and legitimate outcry about the cost of college and the burden of student loans, we’re now looking to pay illegal immigrants to go to college. Wrap your mind around that.
Lee Elci: So, about two months ago, Red, I came on the air with that story. I’m not trying to pat ourselves on the back, but I was given that story by somebody, and I talked about it on the air for about an hour. And I got crickets from all sides. I couldn’t believe it. I know Republican legislators are listening to us, and it just seemed like it fell on deaf ears. And then now, after the election, Red, Ben [Proto, Chairman of CT GOP] comes out and makes a statement. I still can’t believe it. The idea that we’re trying to entice and bribe, essentially, our illegal alien students and give them a better lot in life makes no sense to me at all.
Red Jahncke: Yeah, I mean, the trajectory here at the community college level, as you know, is two-year colleges, associate degree if you graduate, has historically been a tuition-charged venture. You paid tuition, you attended, and you graduated. Then we had the free community college movement launched most prominently by Hillary, Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. It’s not really free, but it’s a substantial break. Okay? From 2016 to the present, in this state and nationally, but dramatically in this state, enrollment in community colleges has been in decline. It is down 33% over the last 7 or 8 years. And introduced during that period, is free community college. So, think about that—if it’s free and you’re giving it away, but your customer base is still declining, there’s something wrong with the product.
Lee Elci: Right.
Red Jahncke: And now they’re paying. So people understand what’s going on: administrators have been, quote, “trying to find creative ideas” to create employment opportunities for illegal immigrants. The creative ideas include finding grants or state programs they can qualify for. No, in fact, all formal programs require classification as employment. You need a Social Security number, and you have to be a U.S. citizen, right?
Lee Elci: Yeah. Shame on them for doing that! It should have been exposed two or three months ago. Unfortunately, we waited too long.
Red Jahncke: Yeah, it’s absurd. And again, it will take enormous effort to actually get to the bottom of this. They hit a stone wall trying to craft these “creative ideas.”
Lee Elci: Yeah.
Red Jahncke: So now they’re encouraging local businesses to employ these illegals so they can make money to go to college. I mean, on one level, we’re a welcoming society, and that’s fine, but this is all driven by an attempt to pay students to attend college. It’s not for their general welfare, right?
Lee Elci: Exactly right.
Red Jahncke: This has got to stop. It’s unfair to citizens. And of course, if they were able to craft one of these creative ideas and actually pay through the community college system, which is what they were attempting to do, they would need money from the state—i.e., taxpayers—to fund those jobs and pay those salaries. So this is citizens paying for illegals to go to college with more tax dollars, while they can’t send their own kids to college because the cost of college has skyrocketed over the last two decades.
Lee Elci: Right.
Red Jahncke: You can’t make this stuff up.
Lee Elci: And, you know, I want to go back to something you had said, too, about the number of kids going to school being down. But as a society, here’s an interesting topic to discuss for a minute or two. Should we be encouraging kids to go to these junior colleges? We always talk about this on the air—kids who go to trade schools, learn a trade, apprentice, or whatever it is, end up ahead of the curve. They go out and become carpenters, plumbers, steelworkers, or auto mechanics. They start off making a really good living, and it only escalates from there. I’m not saying don’t go to school.
Red Jahncke: Yeah, yeah. And you know, let’s get back to the driver behind all this. We, in this state, have the most heavily unionized public sector of all 50 states. What’s driving this is the college professor unions. If their institutions wither on the vine, they’re out of a job. The most important factor here is that unions are losing members. That’s the real driver. They want to maintain their membership because members pay dues. If enrollment continues to decline, you can’t keep the faculty you’ve had. The union shrinks, and the flow of union dues shrinks. That’s what’s going on. I heard just last night, at one of the four state university campuses, there are six professors of physics. Do you know how many physics majors there are?
Lee Elci: Seven?
Red Jahncke: You’re wrong by a factor of two. There are three students majoring in physics on that campus.
Lee Elci: That’s crazy.
Red Jahncke: It really is.
Lee Elci: Thanks, as always, Red Jahncke. Always a pleasure to talk with you.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.