For the Imperial Valley to reach even higher plateaus, our focus must be on higher education. While the Valley has made tremendous strides in recent years, even its sunniest proponents would concede we still have a long way to go when it comes to aesthetics, culture and education. One way to reach new heights in such areas is higher education, as many people with college degrees want more than what we have here now. And the whole thing can become self-perpetuating, because once higher education helps make us a better place, more educated people will want to come to the Valley and stay here, and those people also will want to help the Valley reach its true potential. This all leads up to this week’s Higher Education Week, and here at the Imperial Valley Press we will have six days of stories, starting today, about the state of higher education in our Valley — its costs, its benefits, its growth, its improvement, its future. Much of this series will be good news. San Diego State University- Imperial Valley Campus continues to diversify, Imperial Valley College, after some rough times, is back on track and growing and other higher education programs are blossoming here.

Programs, including the Imperial County Office of Education’s College-Going Initiative, are preparing our students and their parents,for higher education. This program and several others, including Advancement Via Individual Determination, better known as AVID, make things easier and smoother for our young people — and their often reluctant parents — when it comes time for the young person to go off to a fouryear university. Ultimately, though, the idea is to increase the higher educational opportunities in our Valley. Fewer and fewer people now have to leave the Valley to get university degrees, and that is good for the community because we have long been plagued by “brain drain,” which means many of our brightest young people leave for college and never come back to live. If they don’t leave for school and can find a good job upon graduating from college, we can keep more of our talented young people here. We still have a bit of a road to travel in that area.