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Please Keep Your Government Hands On My University
By Christopher P. Loss
2-13-12
Christopher P. Loss teaches at Vanderbilt University and is the author of "Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century" (Princeton University Press, 2012).
In the midst of the national shouting match over healthcare reform three years ago, an irate South Carolinian famously stood up and warned then-Representative Robert Inglis (R-SC) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Would it be a surprise to anyone if the next angry citizen to confront her representative was a professor demanding that the federal government keep its hands off her university?
It’s already happening. Academic leaders’ chilly response to President Obama’s recent call to clamp down on higher education—to link student aid to costs and outcomes—has been loud and clear: Keep your government hands away!
The irony of course is that, like the healthcare sector, the federal government has had its hands all over higher education for a long time—150 years, to be exact. The government gambled on higher education with the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act in 1862, creating the country’s publicly supported land-grant system. But it wasn't until World War II that the federal government doubled down on higher education and the cutting-edge research and citizens that it produced, pumping unimagined sums of money into defense research and into the education of returning veterans, leading to even greater public investments in ideas and people later on. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 launched the government into the student loan business; the Higher Education Act of 1965 extended the loan program and added work study and grants to the mix of aid options. Tens of millions of students have relied on these programs to get an education ever since.
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Given this history and the billions of dollars that hang in the balance, the real question is why hasn’t higher education been regulated more?
More: http://hnn.us/articles/please-keep-your-government-hands-my-university
2-13-12
Christopher P. Loss teaches at Vanderbilt University and is the author of "Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century" (Princeton University Press, 2012).
In the midst of the national shouting match over healthcare reform three years ago, an irate South Carolinian famously stood up and warned then-Representative Robert Inglis (R-SC) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Would it be a surprise to anyone if the next angry citizen to confront her representative was a professor demanding that the federal government keep its hands off her university?
It’s already happening. Academic leaders’ chilly response to President Obama’s recent call to clamp down on higher education—to link student aid to costs and outcomes—has been loud and clear: Keep your government hands away!
The irony of course is that, like the healthcare sector, the federal government has had its hands all over higher education for a long time—150 years, to be exact. The government gambled on higher education with the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act in 1862, creating the country’s publicly supported land-grant system. But it wasn't until World War II that the federal government doubled down on higher education and the cutting-edge research and citizens that it produced, pumping unimagined sums of money into defense research and into the education of returning veterans, leading to even greater public investments in ideas and people later on. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 launched the government into the student loan business; the Higher Education Act of 1965 extended the loan program and added work study and grants to the mix of aid options. Tens of millions of students have relied on these programs to get an education ever since.
-----------
Given this history and the billions of dollars that hang in the balance, the real question is why hasn’t higher education been regulated more?
More: http://hnn.us/articles/please-keep-your-government-hands-my-university
What relationship do you think government ought to have with academia given the long history of close cooperation between the two?
