BUCR Advisor
The campus community was recently forwarded this link to an article titled "How the American University Was Killed, In Five Easy Steps", which basically blames the entire downfall of higher education on conservative principles. Thought it was important to share a rebuttal. So far this summer my reading has focused on intellectual works such as Atlas Shrugged and Academically Adrift, so it’s nice to have some light reading that requires less thinking.
I would say while I obviously agree with the premise of the importance of education, it’s a wild assumption to think that H.G. Wells was specifically speaking of higher education. To think that traditional university or college education is the penultimate education one can receive in life strikes me as a bit narcissistic. What I find even more narcissistic is the thought that a faculty member’s wage is equivalent to a migrant worker. I read The Press Enterprise and I sincerely believe George Milton would disagree.
By no means do I disagree with the downfall of higher education being linked to “poor educational outcomes in our graduates, the out-of-control tuitions and crippling student loan debt.” As I rebut this article I see the same issues, but recognize the true causes of them.
Before
I get to that, I would also point out that I am neither a war-monger or a
corporation, yet I am not foolish enough to see things as simply black and
white as this article does and assume that the culturally liberal upheaval of
the 1960s didn’t come with any drawbacks, such as out of wedlock birth, which leads to
increased
poverty,
which leads to more crime and (ironically enough) less education. I’m grateful that the 60s brought us open-mindedness,
but as all revolutions do, they also brought about consequences. You don’t need to love war and big business
to see that.
But on to the rebuttal...
#1: First, you defund public higher
education
To
address one immediate thought, Pennsylvania is not defunding education; the oft
perpetuated lie. State funding of basic
education has steadily
increased each year
going back to the 2010-2011 fiscal year (the final year under Governor Ed
Rendell). Some folks get confused, since
there was federal stimulus money that was added to the expenditure in 2009-2010
and 2010-2011, but when it comes to how much Pennsylvania taxpayer money is
going to basic education, it has increased each year under Governor Tom Corbett.
The
writer seems to go on a tangent when the topic of attacking political
correctness comes up. So to quickly
address that, political correctness runs completely counter to the idea of open
dissent, the downfall of which the writer laments. It can’t go both ways. We cannot champion being PC and also expect
dissention. The very essence of being
politically correct means we cannot say
what we honestly think; thereby, avoiding true dissent. Unless, of
course, the actual goal is to just dissent against opinions we dislike. Personally, I find it remarkable when a
student dissents against such a lack of diverse thought in higher
education,
Back
to topic, it’s a safe area of agreement to say that the percent of 18-25 year
olds enrolled in undergraduate studies has generally increased over the
years. While the historic value of
higher education in the area of humanities and liberal arts cannot be
understated, we can simply not have more and more of our young adults enrolling
in these studies, or else it will contribute to a consistent unemployment rate
of over 7% (like we've had for years). I stand by the merits
of fields of study such as English, history, psychology, and economics, but
they rarely have a positive
result in employment. The immediate defense of these studies is the
intangible benefit of “expand[ing] the mind, develop[ing] a more completed
human being, [and] a more actively intelligent person and involved
citizen.” Ignoring how differently one
can define “complete”, “intelligent”, and “involved,” it’s important to
consider the cost of that benefit. Is it
worth the student accumulating over $35,200 in debt to earn a
degree that leaves him or her unemployed or underemployed? Is it worth taxpayer money for a student to
earn a degree in philosophy, but now finds him or herself unable to pay rent
and needs to move back in with his or her parents? And while underemployed, interest continues
to build. What is a poor liberal arts
major to do? Why, grad school of course! And while more debt is being added for this
education, assuming the student has not received more taxpayer money for a likely useless
degree,
more interest accrues and the student is not earning money during that time to
pay off any debt. Gleaning lessons from
recent housing turmoil, we know that owing more money than something is
actually worth is chaos. This will inevitably lead us to a burst in the higher education bubble.
In
addition, there is evidence to suggest the more federal government gets
involved with paying for education, the more
expensive it becomes. When you subsidize something, you get more of
it. So if tuition is subsidized, there will be more tuition. And just forgiving debt doesn’t solve any actual problem.
And
quite briefly, while the article bemoans the attempt of conservatives to more
easily manipulate citizens, I think there are countless articles and books that would argue that
students are inundated with liberalism (which is even getting more extreme) at college
(and in The Department
of Education)
far more than conservatism, which makes a mockery of the writer’s premise. It is not the conservatives that are at the
forefront of indoctrination.
