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Sunday, August 14th, 2016

The Republican War on Public Universities

Author:     David Sarasohn
Source:     New Republic
Publication Date:     August 10, 2016
 Link: The Republican War on Public Universities
Stephan:   We stand at a point on the road of human history where those cultures that are best educated, and that live in a wellness oriented society will be best prepared to deal with what is coming. In contrast the Republican Party is doing everything in its power from the Rightwing media echo chamber, to public universities, and school, to produce fear, indoctrination, and ignorance. I have made this point many times in SR, and here is yet a further demonstration that, on the basis of social outcome data, it is clear that Republican governance is detrimental and inferior -- if the point of the drill is individual and social wellbeing. If the only thing that matters is power and profit for the few, well that's another matter.

When Ronald Reagan launched his bid for governor of California in 1966, igniting the conservative revolution that would reinvent the Republican Party, he promised “to clean up the mess at Berkeley.” He blamed the campus unrest on “a small minority of hippies, radicals and filthy speech advocates” whose leaders should “be taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown off campus—permanently.” After taking office, Reagan promptly fired University of California President Clark Kerr and axed the university system’s budget.

Half a century later, surveying the national public-university funding scene in 2015, The Chronicle of Higher Education bemoaned “the list of budgetary showdowns playing out between Republican governors and higher education.” While higher education’s state funding problems over the past decades have bipartisan causes, the targeting of these institutions’ budgets lately is much more common in states with GOP leadership—and may worsen yet.

Writing at Salon last year, Sean McElwee and Robbie Hiltonsmith analyzed a Grapevine study from Illinois State University and found “when Republicans take over governor’s mansions they reduce spending on higher education by $0.23 per $1,000 in personal income (a measure of the state’s total tax base). […]

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1 Comment

  1. Rev. Dean on Sunday, August 14, 2016 at 7:49 am

    Even elementary schools and middle schools and high schools have increased the amount parents need to spend just to give their children the opportunity to get an education. The amount can be staggering to a poor family and force them to cut their food budget or any other source they can cut just to get their children through high school, not just universities. It is a shameful reminder of the trend of the “trickle-down” policies which do not trickle down anything.
    If we are going to survive in the twenty-first century, we must change the course of education, and make it free to all.