I believe tuition is going up because of the bureaucratic system this administration has put in place, mirroring a large corporation.
If you and others have a problem with this structure, you by all means should advocate for the right things — your education and academic support.
It is certainly egregious that public universities have failed their state citizenry by catering to wealthy, out-of-state students. Your money is fueling administrative salaries and fancy benefits for those who are not responsible for the actual mission of the University.
I absolutely think tenure needs to be reformed, and people should be made to teach more while maintaining productive research levels.
However, I don’t think departments like Asian Languages and Literatures or Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies are bankrupting the University financially, even though our own government has emphasized the need for people to learn Arabic or Chinese and to be versed in issues such as sexual assault.
Even if you think a college education is simply for “productive jobs,” that still requires more state sponsorship (economically and socially) than you probably care to admit.
Whether one becomes a nuclear physicist or a fine arts teacher, both will require a four-year degree, and both are meaningful for a functioning society. Education serving the needs of the state has a long and fascinating history. It has been proliferated by many countries around the world.
I don’t think we need to worry too much about what students actually do immediately with their degree per se, as if the measure of their success is a middle-class wage that’s getting ever more difficult to obtain.
Rather, we should measure success by what students are actually trained to do and by what that can enable them to do as functioning members of society and as individuals.
MacGrandGradMN via mndaily.com
