Tag Archives: higher education

When Does the University Stop Being Public?

The role and function of universities is increasingly a topic of discussion, and there is plenty to discuss. College costs have soared, student loan debt is at an all-time and dangerous high, and people are asking–reasonably–whether the product is worth the cost. The standards for making that determination are frequently misplaced; I’ve posted before my own frustration with those who see no difference between education and job training.

Meanwhile, state legislators routinely issue critiques and mandates. (This shouldn’t surprise those of us in higher education, since the General Assembly evidently considers itself a 150-person school board for K-12. This year it’s thou shalt teach cursive. A few years ago it was phonics.) Some of those legislative critiques are justified; most state universities could do with a leaner, meaner administrative structure. Many others betray an appalling lack of understanding of what a university is about.

One question that doesn’t seem to occur to these legislative overlords is: why should they have the ability to dictate university policies at all?

The assumed response to such a question is “because those institutions are supported by the state. It’s the Golden Rule: he who has the gold, rules.” But that assumption is getting thin indeed. State support is currently 11% of the budget at my university, and we are no anomaly. The vast majority of our funding comes from other sources: primarily tuition and fees, research grants, and fundraising.

This situation raises an interesting question: when do state universities cease being public? At what point does it make more sense for an institution of higher education to assess the considerable costs imposed by legislative mandates, compare those costs to the dwindling benefits of state financial support–and declare themselves private?

When children become self-supporting, they can declare themselves emancipated.

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Ignorance on Parade

Words fail.

Is this what America is becoming–a society where the search for knowledge that is ultimately what makes us human–is displaced by training for worker ants?

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True Colors

Sponsors of anti-gay legislation and proponents of measures to “save marriage” nearly always deny that they are homophobic. They just love their gay friends, and care deeply about the welfare of their gay neighbors. In a phrase I’ve heard so often it makes me want to upchuck, they “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”

Sure they do.

As gay equality becomes ever more inevitable, and these bigots become more hysterical, the mask of goodwill–never very persuasive–slips further. Two recent, glaring examples come from Wisconsin and Michigan.

In Wisconsin, demonstrably crazy Governor Scott Walker has evidently taken a break from demonizing public sector employees and harassing public school teachers, in order to pursue his latest “policy” initiative: reversing laws that grant hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners. Walker claims that allowing such visits violates language in the Wisconsin Constitution.(Interestingly, the language Walker is relying on is exactly the same as the language Republicans are trying to add to the Indiana Constitution–language denying same-sex couples not only the right to marry, but the right to any benefit “substantially similar” to marriage.)

In Michigan, the House of Representatives–with the strong endorsement of Rick Snyder, Michigan’s Governor (and strong contender for America’s Nuttiest Chief Executive)– has approved an amendment to that state’s education budget that would impose a five-percent penalty on colleges and universities that offer domestic partnership benefits to same-sex partners.

The only reason to deny hospital visitation rights is to hurt people at their most vulnerable. Such a measure serves no other purpose. The effort to “punish” universities makes it more difficult for them to offer a high-quality education–not just because of the lost revenue, but because an anti-gay message coupled with an inability to offer partner benefits is a huge roadblock to recruitment of good faculty–gay or straight.

These measures, and others like them, are desperate, last-gasp efforts to deny cultural change. They will undoubtedly be reversed, if they become law at all. But they offer us a very valuable look at the real face of anti-gay activism–a face contorted by hate and fear.

Whatever else they may be, when the mask comes off, these are small, mean-spirited people.

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