Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in an attempt to out-stupid our own Gov. Doug Ducey, recently announced that he wants to cut $300 million in funding from his state’s public university system. He also wants to change the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin so that it would no longer promote the “search for truth,” or seek to “improve the human condition,” but rather aim to “meet the state’s workforce needs.”
What does this have to do with us? It reveals why conservative lawmakers like Ducey seek to undermine higher education. To them, college is not a process of discovery and self-improvement, it’s a corporate bootcamp that grooms students for employment. Because they believe universities should limit themselves to this facile goal, why should they have to fork over taxpayer money to fund it?
This goes against the purpose of higher education. Universities must aim to do more than just provide job training; they exist to cultivate better citizens. Democracies are only as good as the people who vote in them, and so higher education must help to develop a higher understanding of the public good.
There is also an intangible value to higher education that — despite not being very utilitarian — cannot be discounted. Without education, we have little hope of building an understanding of the world around us. All too often, we rely on our own personal experiences to construct our view of the world.
This is a shaky foundation and it cannot sustain any sort of complex truths that challenge conventional thinking. With education, we are able to broaden our capacity for understanding by supplementing our personal experiences with that of others. George R.R. Martin, the creator of the “Song of Ice and Fire” series, put it best: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. … The man who never reads lives only one.”
Higher education certainly isn’t the only way to pursue intellectual curiosity. History is full of intellectuals who were self-taught. And today the means for a complete education is widely available with plenty of free resources for those who want to learn on their own.
But the value of higher education is more than just an enriched mind. By some estimates, people who have a four-year degree will earn half a million dollars more than those with just some college experience and no degree. This doesn’t even take into account the pay gap between college graduates and people with just a high school education. It also doesn’t consider the increased value of a graduate degree.
So if higher education has both real and intangible value, why are Republicans so eager to cut its public funding? Ask one of them and they’ll wag their finger and tell you that throwing money at the problem won’t fix it. (Try testing that one out on your landlord when your rent is overdue and see if the problem goes away.) People like Ducey probably think it’s just a coincidence that, over the course of the recession, Arizona had both the deepest funding cuts to public universities as well as the largest increases in tuition.
Our universities need funding in order to be successful. ASU is the largest public university in the country and arguably the most ambitious, striving to be both inclusive and elite. But it’s also located in a state that has shown nothing but contempt for higher education. Ducey’s attempt to cut public funding to a university system that lost more than any other during the recession is incompatible with the goals and values here at ASU.
Reach the columnist at hneidig@asu.edu or follow @hneidig on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
