Day 157

Times Higher Education is an industry magazine published in London. They focus, obviously, a great deal on British and European education, but also spend about as much time covering the international higher education landscape. The buzz in global higher education at the moment is that while the US and several European countries are disinvesting in higher education in response to the current economics crisis, major players in Asia such as China are pouring money into higher education. This has led most everyone to believe that China will rather suddenly become a major competitor in an area where US schools along with a good handful of European universities have for the most part for over 100 years been the undisputed leaders. Granted, the US still spends far more on education than China at the moment, but the gap is closing. In a fairly short article in the most recent issue of T.H.E., they note that in the US, "public higher education budgets are in freefall. Governments have discovered they can cut funding and get away with it." They cite one university to illustrate the point: the "world-leading" University of California system. In this example, they point out that "the freeze on student places, tuition-fee hikes of a third or more, and staff-furloughs...are not enough to cover the revenue gap." They blame a change in Western culture, which is "the weakening of public consent for taxation and the idea of higher education as a shared benefit," and the regression to "the alternative model of education as an investment by families and students."

American families and students are currently focused on the role of a university as a means to a financial end, meaning they pay for a college education so the student will be able to find a good job. This has not always been the case, hence the assertion of a change in Western culture. It is true that land grant universities included engineering and agricultural schools, and we have a rich (although surprisingly short) history of quality law, medical, and business schools all aiming at professions. But for the majority of the history of American higher education (right up into the 70s), a bachelors degree was seen as a way to improve the mind in a variety of ways such as improving culture, developing personal philosophies, sharing a common knowledge with your fellow man, learning ethical values, being a better citizen, and so on.  Everyone benefited from a local University--including its museums, research, and classroom education--which is why it was worth the public investment. Look up the history of the University of Chicago, and see what it did for that city in a very short amount of time. Now, the perception is that a university is there to serve as a vehicle for young people to figure out how to make money, which is why we have fights over what, precisely, undergraduate tuition and taxpayer money pays for that directly benefits the career prospects of those students. This is why politicians and taxpayers want to know why their hard-earned money is going to support a program in ancient Russian literature when California employers aren't exactly chomping at the bit for 22-year olds who are experts on the role of Peter the Great on the reformation of the Russian alphabet.

I am a believer in education for its own sake, and I have not held one job aside from undergraduate internships related to my professional undergraduate major. I know I've preached on about this before, but it is closely related to the perception that universities are wasting money on foolish subjects that do not lead to jobs for students, and that the university serves a public good, rather than just a private one to the individuals who receive those degrees. Perhaps universities, including this one, have shot themselves in the foot while trying to hold onto precious taxpayer money: our message has been that the presence of universities, and their subsequent degree recipients in a community are directly related to economic growth. We have failed to convey in that message that this prosperity is in part related to the fact that we have a generally well-educated population on a variety of liberal arts topics, and not just because we "produce" computer engineers and financial managers. We have also failed to successfully express the non-economic importance of culture, libraries, the arts, original research, and the understanding of human history. American prowess, power, prosperity, and legacy will diminish along with our de-prioritization of our education and culture.