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

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.alternet.org/news/149583/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.

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 at the link --

[Still a Democrat]

1. There's talk of "privatizing" the University of Michigan

which I interpret as cutting off state aid. Hopefully, there's been enough backlash that I don't believe it will happen.

[white_wolf]

2. Since Jefferson founded the University

of Virgina as a free public university for anyone to attend you have to bet he's rolling over in his grave right about now.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. The indoctrinating of America.

If the child won't go to the church, the church will find its way into the schools.

[EC]

4. Worse than that

Walker here in WI wants the UW-Madison research labs to switch to money making research (viagra comes to mind) to develop product instead of working with stem-cell research or cures for cancer or other research for major life-threatening deceases.

[ladjf]

5. All education is "screwed". The people who are masterminding

the "great heist" know that an uneducated population is easier to control. nt

[white_wolf]

6. That's what Hitler thought

"Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction." Hmm who is acting like Nazis now Glen?