Eternally frustrated by "liberal" universities, conservatives now want to tear them down

[applegrove]

Eternally frustrated by "liberal" universities, conservatives now want to tear them down

by Nicole Hemmer at Vox

http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/3/7/14841292/liberal-universities-conservative-faculty-sizzler-pc

"SNIP.........

No sooner had Pat McCrory come into the governor’s office in 2013 than he began making broadsides against the university, using stark economic measures to target liberal arts programs, like gender studies, with which he disagreed. His stated view was that university programs should be funded based on how many of their graduates get jobs.

Notably, the McCrory campaign was bankrolled by Art Pope, founder of the Pope Center for Higher Education (now the Martin Center), an organization dedicated to increasing the “diversity of ideas” taught on campus. As its policy director, Jay Schalin, explained in 2015, the crisis at the university stems from “the ideas that are being discussed and promoted”: “multiculturalism, collectivism, left-wing post-modernism.” He wants less Michel Foucault on campus, more Ayn Rand.

But bills calling for the banning of works by leftist historian Howard Zinn or hiring professors based on party registration haven’t yet made it out of the proposal stage. What has? Steep funding cuts that have led to higher tuition, smaller faculties, and reduced access to higher education for low-income students.

That is the real threat to the professorate, and to the university more broadly. And as with the strategic conservative embrace of postmodernism, it also represents an erosion of a worldview that once understood the value of an advanced education beyond mere job preparation or vocational training. Unable to reverse the ivory tower’s tilt, many on the right are willing to smash it altogether, another sign of the nihilism infecting the conservative project more broadly.


...........SNIP"

[TDale313]

1. The last thing Conservatives want

Is an educated population capable of critical thinking. The attacks on Public Education at all levels and to funding in higher education are absolutely deliberate.

[Freethinker65]

2. +1000

[applegrove]

3. +1000 The uneducated are easier to dupe into voting for oligarchy.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Oh, heck. I don't think any physics programs are needed,

because I'm never going to study physics. Or art history, ditto.

Jesus H. Christ. Universities exist to offer a very broad range of programs, not the three or four any one person might use.

This sort of thing also underscores how completely wrong conservatives are, because the only way they can apparently stop the spread of liberal ideas is to kill them at birth. Otherwise, as others have already noted, reality has a strong liberal bias.