College Reform: Build Lifeboats to Escape the Sinking Ship

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | August 12, 2020 | Stephanie Brenzel

[karpov]

In their recent Martin Center policy brief, Joy Pullmann and Sumantra Maitra get much right about the activist professor problem in academia. These professors are dominating the profession in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible three or four years ago. Their control has led to an ideological monoculture, which suppresses freedom of thought and creative inquiry.

One need not look further than the job boards to see how the cycle perpetuates. Here is a sample of some of the positions advertised in my field (religious studies) this year:

A global liberation professor with expertise in “global theologies of liberation and de-colonial theory” A Latin Patristics professor who can apply the insights of Augustine of Hippo to race, ethnic, and indigenous studies An Asian religions professor working on “critical approaches to race, gender, sexuality, social hierarchies, and inequality, and power struggles and political movements.” But as much as I support their diagnosis, I strongly disagree with their proposed solutions. They advocate for the same tactics as the activist professors in order to right the sinking ship of higher education.

I don’t believe that approach will produce any long-lasting reform. Instead, it will further stoke the animosity between liberals and conservatives on campus. A better way for reform lies in targeting accreditation, bypassing the governance issues completely.

Their first proposal is to limit public funds for activist disciplines through regulation.

How would they propose regulating such a quagmire? The federal government gives over $75 billion to higher education annually. State investments amount to another $87 billion. Not to mention the $1.5 trillion of government-backed student loans.

[ealgeone]

End gubment money in colleges as a first step.

[ClearCase_guy]

Federal money and Student loans should be increasingly slanted toward people who avoid government schools (for young people) and who avoid meaningless majors in college. If you want a degree in Lesbian Dance Theory, that’s fine — but you need to pay for that college degree in cash. No one should be allowed to borrow money to get that degree.

[antidisestablishment]

“Federal money and Student loans should...”

be eliminated.

[axxmann]

Where was the author “3 or 4 years ago”? This was happening long before that.
He is a moron.

[Wuli]

Yes, get out of the present education industrial establishment and man the lifeboats on the open seas of society, building floating light houses of free inquiry and learning. Build the right beacons and they will come.