When it comes to cutting funds and budgeting, it seems like the first thing to be affected is education. Money is constantly short in the classroom when other economic matters take precedence, but that may not necessarily be the smartest move in the long run.

One of the biggest challenges our country, and even we as individual states, face is the need for jobs and people qualified enough to work those jobs. We need innovators, entrepreneurs, visionaries and, most importantly, change.

We need new ideas and people willing to go forward and make these ideas a reality, so there can be change. When the country faces financial stress, which happens more and more often these days, it concentrates all its funds on the economy itself.

Just like a science experiment we’d do in our 8th grade biology class, our nation is a place that learns and grows by trial and error.

We face opposition from the people that say our hypothesis is wrong, we try our experiment anyway, and it either falls apart or changes everything.

After trying to fund a failing economy throughout history and never really seeing the results we hope for and need, it’s probably time to try something else.

Maybe the answer is to fund the inputs of the economy rather than economy itself.

If change is what we need, we should be investing in the place that cultivates changers and movers every single day. Not just at universities, but at elementary and high school levels, too.

After all, it’s our country, now. Not literally by possession, but by effect.

What happens today impacts our tomorrow far more than the tomorrow of established businessmen that are only five years from retirement.

If we’re going to live with it, we should have the power to create it.