Increasingly, public policy aims to help individuals get the college education they need. Jobs require it.
Social culture grows from it.
And local income taxes benefit from it. But new challenges to the effort loom large. A special education teacher, he is working toward the master's degree he needs in the long run to be allowed to teach students with learning disabilities. But Whitaker works full-time during the school year, has a family to raise, and lives in rural Montezuma County, west of Durango. He could be a posterchild for modern higher education.