Source: The In-State Tuition Break, Slowly Disappearing
I wrote this
Here is Clark Kerr’s warning.
“…I am concerned..that…the greatest threats to the university will be those which arise from within the university…”
Right now the threat is not to the university itself – at least not to its financial and research arms. The present threat is to American education.
Our biggest problem is not that students have to pay so much (though that is a gigantic problem); it is how little they get back. State schools going after money is just a symptom of the destructive illness that attacks the “education” in higher education.
I don’t have room to describe what is happening. I have a blog to do that: inside-higher-ed.com. I can only quote the man that Clark Kerr considered the most insightful observer of higher ed of his generation, David Riesman. He saw symptoms as far back as 1980.
“…advantage can…be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions…the student estate often does not grasp its own interests, and those who speak in its name are not always its friends…”
The carriers of this illness are the professors (most now administrators) who saw how easily they could acquire prestige, and how easily they could hide their actions. The Obama administration is trying to shine a light on them, and that is good, but it will take a lot of light to ferret them out.
If we keep watching what they do, as this article does, we will learn who they really are. Hopefully, then we will act.”
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