One of the strangest things about an American university education is that it bundles a whole lot of different things together. If you want to take a course in high-level mathematics or listen to the lectures of an accomplished historian of Ming China, you must also buy membership in one of the country’s most lavish gyms; purchase all-you-can-eat meals at breakfast, lunch, and dinner; rent a room in a student dorm even if your parents happen to live a few miles down the road; pay an army of administrators whose jobs range from organizing parties to hiring puppies for you to pet during finals; subsidize student clubs that are devoted to such varied activities as playing Dungeons & Dragons or blind-tasting exclusive wines; and help to pay the lavish salaries of football and waterpolo coaches.
A modest proposal
Something has gone badly wrong with the American university. As recently as a decade ago, a big bipartisan majority of Americans said that they have a lot of trust in higher education. Now, the number is down to about one in three.
The decline in public support for universities has many causes. It is rooted in the widespread perception that they have become ideological monoliths, barely tolerating the expression of any conservative opinions on campus. It has to do with the rapidly growing endowments of the largest universities, which now command a degree of tax-exempt wealth that seems to many people out of all proportion to their pedagogical mission. It has to do with their admissions policies, which judge prospective students on the color of their skin and the degree of their disadvantage, seemingly in defiance of a recent Supreme Court order. And it has to do with the rapidly rising costs of university, with the annual price of attendance now approaching six figures at many selective schools.
The decline in public support for higher education has also had severe consequences. Donald Trump and his allies have clearly identified universities as a significant bastion of left-wing political power, and seem determined to weaken them by any means possible. The resulting assault on top institutions from Columbia to Harvard is deeply illiberal. Whatever the faults of the universities, it obviously chills speech and undermines academic freedom when the federal government tries to exact revenge by doing what it can to weaken the sector. But what’s striking about the Trump administration’s attack on American higher education is not just how brutal and illiberal it is; it’s also how little most Americans seem to care.
Anybody who wants American universities to thrive—as I do—therefore needs to walk and chew gum at the same time. Institutions like Harvard are right to resist attempts to erode their academic freedom by imposing the substantive views of the Trump administration on them. It is therefore good news that a district court judge ruled yesterday that the manner in which the administration canceled federal funding for Harvard violated the university’s First Amendment rights. But rightful resistance to an illiberal president must not serve as an excuse to keep ignoring the genuine problems which have led to such deep popular revulsion for the entire sector.
A few voices within academia are starting to recognize that. It is, for example, smart that Yale University has instituted a new committee that is tasked with investigating the roots of the university’s fall from public grace, and to investigate possible remedies….
https://www.persuasion.community/p/unbundle-the-university
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