Posted on 06/29/2019 5:30:30 AM PDT by reaganaut1
As more students have headed to college and a degree is seen as a way to shape students as workers and as citizens, higher education’s mission has become more important. Its leaders, and their personal beliefs, have become more contentious, too.
In recent months, many conservative thinkers have publicly debated how to reform higher education—or, even, if they should.
Political liberals, as well, have joined in. From reform and technocratic changes to complete withdrawal and abolition, below is a selection of the more-insightful additions to the debate over higher education, and perhaps, a look at where future reformers will pull American higher education.
At a conference on The Virtue of Nationalism hosted by the Bow Group, Common Sense Society, and the Danube Institute, Roger Scruton suggests a solution to the politicized university is to get rid of universities altogether:
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In National Affairs, Frederick Hess and Brendan Bell choose the less-radical route Scruton suggests and advocate the creation of “An Ivory Tower of Our Own:”
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In The Atlantic, Alan Jacobs argues against cloistering into a conservative unversity; for him, the bigger issue is intellectual diversity:
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In Arc Digital Media, Avi Woolf worries that turning away from the university betrays the hunt for knowledge, even though conservatives face a difficult uphill battle:
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In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Adam Daniel and Chad Wellmon note a different threat to the pursuit of knowledge and the university’s well-being—the university’s insatiable appetite:
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In Areo, James A. Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose offer “A Principled Defense of the University” instead of calling for its abandonment:
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In American Greatness, Roger Kimball doesn’t expect change from interest groups on campus, but perhaps in a larger change in the culture:
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Bkmk
ML/NJ
“University” is no longer a system of higher education. It has become an industry fueled by government subsidies. There are billions of dollars in the system that everyone involved at the “management” level have their sights set upon. Nothing will change soon since the loans and interest paid back are tied to the ACA. Without that additional revenue stream the ACA would fold in months.
https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/302247-loans-subsidize-obamacare
I meant to add: If all student loans are forgiven Obamacare will most likely have to default to a medicare plan since it won’t have the student loan subsidy. I would bet most of these morons on the left don’t even know about this.
Also, I believe they intended to use students’ debt to force them into some indentured servitude to the federal government.
From President Eisenhower's farewell address:
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.So the problem isn't new. It's just become vastly worse since 1960.The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
The American State University by Norman Foerster (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1937)
The Future of the Liberal College by Norman Foerster (New York: Appleton-Century, 1938)
In these two books, Norman Foerster brilliantly argues the case for classical liberal education as opposed to utilitarian and/or egalitarian approaches
The Meaning of a Liberal Education by Everett Dean Martin (New York: Norton, 1926)
Martin argues that through its focus on wisdom, virtue, temperance and justice, liberal education enables individuals to stand out from the herd and to, among other things, resist propaganda. He condemns much of the educational philosophy in vogue at the time, with its focus on forming habits and conditioned responses as resembling animal training.
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