Is American Higher Ed Screwed? Conservatives Try to Privatize College As Tuition Soars

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Daniel Denvir

Is American Higher Ed Screwed? Conservatives Try to Privatize College As Tuition Soars
The economic crisis has created an opportunity for attacks on public institutions. Universities are not immune.

January 22, 2011 |


As in most corners of American life, crisis is the new normal in academia. Investment returns to university endowments have plummeted, state aid is being cut, and critical federal stimulus dollars are running out. Tuition is up, enrollment is being capped, positions are being eliminated, and universities are increasingly relying on part-time adjunct faculty that shuttle from campus to campus in an effort to cobble together a paycheck.

Parents, out-of-work and saddled with depleted savings and home values, are less able to afford tuition than ever. As these axes fall, conservatives are pushing to remake universities in the image of private corporations: budgets dependent on the generosity of rich people, professors instructed to prove their market fitness or pack their bags, and cuts to the humanities in favor of more “practical” courses of study.

University of California Berkeley political scientist Wendy Brown argues that, paradoxically, public universities are most at risk of corporate takeover. Private colleges will remain dedicated to providing the elite with a well-rounded, liberal arts education. Higher education as a whole will become more stratified and less inclusive.

Hobbled by a 17-percent mid-year cut in 2009, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University raised tuition by between 16 and 20 percent for the current academic year. More cuts are expected. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/149583/is_american_higher_ed_screwed_conservatives_try_to_privatize_college_as_tuition_soars/

[LiberalEsto]

1. It was screwed in the 70s when tuitions started rising

and when Reagan, as governor of California, imposed tuition on the previously FREE California state colleges and universities. Until then, tuition at many state colleges and universities was nominal or no-cost. Then the unending avalanche to tuition increases began.

I suspected something like this was coming.
Soon higher education will only be for the elite.

[glinda]

2. And the only knowledge will be conservative views and values.

[ThomCat]

3. We all know that one of their goals is to return College

to the way they imagine it was in some golden days of old.

Having large numbers of people go to college goes against everything the conservatives believe in. Having publicly funded colleges goes against everything they believe in.

They want colleges to be small, private, elite, and only for the children of the rich.

The only way someone who isn't rich would be able to go to college would be to work their way up in a job, paying for nighttime classes (if you could afford it).

Or, get a job and prove your value to that company so that they pay for you to take classes in college.

Either way, you would be working full time and only taking one class at a time. Your education would be dependent on your employer's approval of you and your value to them. And it would take you so damned long to get a degree this way, one class at a time, that it would take most of your career to get a degree.

This assumes, of course, that you can stay with one company long enough and assuming they are willing to pay for enough classes. But why would they do that? That would mean they have to pay you more, and it would make it more likely you might leave for a better job.

In this type of unequal, tiered setting (almost a caste system) that conservatives want companies have a definite incentive to let you take only the classes that you need for your job and no more. Never enough to actually get a credential.