Could Indiana’s legislature be any more arrogant, or any more oblivious to what constitutes value? (That was a rhetorical question, since the correct answer is obviously “no.”)
The Indianapolis Star recently reported on yet another example in the General Assembly’s continuing war on education. The report described Senate Bill 199–which recently passed the Senate– as a “Frankenstein of technical education-related changes.” (The bill had originally included restrictions on social media access for minors, but that measure was stripped by the bill’s author on the Senate floor.)
It is possible that many of the legislators who voted for SB 199 were unaware of a single line, “buried in the middle of the bill and absent from the bill digest,” that would eliminate any public college degree if graduates holding that degree are found to earn less than those with only a high school diploma. As the Star noted, that provision is “yet another blow for the state’s higher education institutions less than a year after last-minute language from last legislative session led colleges to cut more than a fifth of the state’s degrees because of low enrollment.”
The bill ties the definition of a “low earning outcome program” to a section of federal law amended by President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That bill already restricts federal student loans from going toward such degrees, but the Indiana bill would go further by putting the degree programs themselves on the chopping block.
It’s unclear what programs could fall into such a category. Programs where the median earnings of its cohort surpassed the median earnings of Hoosiers between 24 and 35 with only a high school diploma — around $33,500 — would be unaffected by the bill.
If a university wants to keep a low earning degree program, it can appeal to the higher education commission. Without commission approval, the university would be mandated to eliminate the program.
According to the report, the bill still needs to pass the House and be signed by the governor to become law. Given the makeup of the House, and the cluelessness of the Governor, not to mention the fact that the bill contains numerous other–arguably reasonable–provisions, I don’t hold out much hope for a last-minute reprieve.
Where do I start with a critique of this ridiculous provision?
For one thing, it is yet another display of what might be called the legislature’s “overlord complex”–the evident belief that, by virtue of winning a (gerrymandered) seat in Indiana’s General Assembly, legislators have been endowed with the right to make all manner of decisions: controlling (i.e. overruling) municipal governments, school corporations, medical personnel…Our overlords deem themselves capable of deciding a wide range of issues that are arguably none of their concern–from whether local governments can ban plastic bags or puppy mills to whether doctors and medical practitioners can determine the medical necessity of abortions or provide gender care.
Our overlords’ zeal to redefine education as job training, and place a fiscal value on everything, is also burdensome and expensive. Some state functionary will be tasked (and paid) to assess the earnings of students who’ve chosen these “low value” degrees. Is that really where citizens want their tax dollars spent?
What happens when inevitable changes in the job market depress the earnings of people with degrees that previously escaped the ax?
And what do we tell the student who wants to major in art or philosophy or a similar subject–a student whose intellectual interests trump her concerns about earning potential? (For that matter, how do we factor in MAGA’s new “tradwife” focus–which, if it took off, would see female graduates taking “home ec” and then staying home with multiple children rather than earning anything at all?)
What really, really makes me livid, however, isn’t the legislature’s obvious inability to recognize the practical problems and jurisdictional breaches such measures represent. It is the constant equation of education with job training, legislators’ evident inability to recognize the value of intellectual inquiry.
A few days ago, I quoted passages from David Brooks’ final column for the New York Times. In that essay, he noted that the road to Trump and MAGA had been paved by the generations of students and their parents who fled from the humanities and the liberal arts, “driven by the belief that the prime purpose of education is to learn how to make money.”
Indiana’s legislature has been drinking that Kool-Aid for years. It’s one reason Indiana is often said to be in competition to be the new Mississippi….
Let’s be clear, Sheila. Indiana IS the Mississippi of the Midwest and our overlords are only too happy to wear the title with pride. It’s easier to keep ’em poor, if you keep ’em ignorant.
I disagree with the above. They want a docile and unquestioning public.
You don’t need the populace to be poor for such a population.
Btw,Indiana’s politicians tend to be impudent parasites.
I agree with Sheila’s stance, except that the Republicans in Indianapolis are not the “overlords.” They would be more like the supervisors over the peasants. The oligarchs are the overlords. In Indy’s case, that would be the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, with support from the IEDC.
I’ve not spent any time investigating the Indiana or Indy Chamber, but if it’s anything like East Central Indiana, it’s where the major oligarchs put up curtains over their outright control. Eli Lilly controls much, so they don’t want to be “out there too much,” so they syphon dark money through the Chamber and other economic development efforts. Our “supervisors” are handsomely paid and protected by these dark interests that intentionally avoid transparency.
The Chamber in Indiana opposes any kind of legal cannabis legislation (in fact, they keep making it more restrictive) and wants to shift the costs of providing on-the-job training to public schools. If they can keep their costs down, they will make more profit.
Hypocrisy Alert: They protest and prevent unions from being formed by workers in the state, while they enjoy the benefits of having a union for the oligarchs.
p.s. Most doctors I know financially support the Reds, who fight like hell to prevent worker unions in our state, but what is the AMA or IMA? 😉