The dark future of public higher education in America

Will public higher ed, as we know it today, be thrown into the educational dust bin? Or, will Americans of all social and political persuasions put an end to the destruction underway to turn back the clock? Unfortunately, the partisanship divide that has gripped America has metastasized into higher education.

Oh, you say — Republicans as well as Democrats view higher education as important, if not essential, in preparing college graduates for the 21st century workplace.

A Pew Research Center survey (2019) paints a different picture. When asked if the higher education system in the U.S. is going in the right or wrong direction, Republican and Democratic majorities believe higher education is going in the wrong direction.

But, and it’s a big but, 73% of Republicans and Republican leaners are significantly more likely to express this view than are Democrats and Democratic leaners, who tally 52%.

So, what’s wrong with higher education, and what needs to be changed? According to Pew researchers, roughly eight-in-10 Republicans (79%) say professors bring their political and social views into the classroom, a major reason why the higher education system is headed in the wrong direction (only 17% of Democrats say the same). Moreover, Republicans believe that a major reason higher education is going in the wrong direction is that students are not getting the skills they need to succeed in the workplace.

A much smaller majority of Democrats agree (Republican 73% vs. Democrats 56%).

The state of public higher education can and does vary from state-to-state as does the call for reform. However, there is one state — Florida — where a populist Republican presidential wannabe Gov. Ron Desantis is intent on destroying public higher education. Oh, he claims not so. After all, Gov. Desantis was reelected to office with a walloping winning margin of nearly 20 percent to root out evil liberalism and indoctrination in Florida higher education.

So, what exactly does Desantis want to put on the state’s higher education deathbed? Faculty tenure is at the top of the list. Desantis believes that tenure has become a protective cover for incompetent and worse, ideologically liberal professors who have taken upon themselves to preach, not teach. Learning is no longer about discovery and acquiring new skills and knowledge — so the accusation goes. Baloney! I served as a tenured professor at a major public university in Florida for 15 years and have no recollection of this behavior by any faculty member.

Tenure was put in place in United States colleges and universities at the outset of the 20th century to ensure that the search for truth and knowledge would not be censored by political or educational authorities or rich donors. Nor would professors practice self-censorship. And, if you don’t think this can happen, please study the higher educational system in China.

Gov. Desantis has already had some success in attacking tenure as he has signed into law a bill that would require tenured faculty members to undergo a review every five years. This measure is one step — with more needed, in his view — toward aggressively examining faculty performance.

Also, near the top of the list of candidates to be extinguished are educational programs that teach about cultural diversity and social tolerance. Diversity programs, the governor asserts, impose ideological conformity and provoke political activism — both “no-nos.” Gov. Desantis intends to ask Republican state legislators who fund diversity programs at the state’s 12 universities to pull the fiscal plug and let these programs “wither on the vine” — his words.

Gov. Desantis endorses legislation that, critics believe, will ensure Florida’s public universities and colleges are grounded in the history and philosophy of Western Civilization; prohibit diversity, equity and inclusion programs — including critical race theory that requires young white students to believe they should feel guilty about the sad history of U.S. racial discrimination.

Higher public education is certainly on the ropes in Florida with unrelenting attacks by a Republican governor whose presidential ambition and conservative radicalism are in plain sight. Is public higher education in the U.S. destined for a dark future? I hope not. But, neither populists nor Republicans are friends of higher education, are they?