I think it's important to remember that state legislatures are not designed around meeting the needs of citizens and fostering well-being. Their primary purpose is to balance the budget.
This is not meant to excuse the cruelty and misguided nature of many of the choices legislatures make, but to illuminate the systemic barriers to making better choices. Legislators quickly adopt a kind of learned helplessness to think beyond these confines.
This is why education is so often cut, because legislators perceive that it can be cut unlike other things, like say...prisons. Higher ed institutions swallow these indignities and still make claims for excellence, so why couldn't they do with less?
Institutions are forced to "make do" but in doing so, they make them more vulnerable to more cuts. They don't appear to be suffering and their public-facing communication is about how great they are, so that makes them candidates for cuts.
Plus, higher ed is filled with those terrible liberals who don't deserve our hard-earned money to peddle their communist socialist nonsense in their women's studies basket weaving courses. This narrative is pervasive. Institutions have not done nearly enough (IMO) to push back.
Higher Ed will soon be unable to make do. Institutions will have to admit that the financial conditions under which they'll be expected to operate make those operations impossible. I would argue we've been there for years already. insidehighered.com/blogs/just-vis…
Student debt, adjunctification, etc...more than demonstrate that institutions have not been making do. They've been sacrificing the well-being of the more vulnerable to continue to operate. The coronavirus crisis will leave institutions without any more cards to play.
This could be an extinction-level even for many many institutions. Even public institutions that feel "permanent" may be "forced" to do what seem to be unthinkable things.
Imagine a state system that decides the only alternative is online gen eds, after which students apply to specific majors at regional campuses. State flagships will retain some semblance of traditional 4-yr schools because they need fans to fill stadiums, everyone else....?
That may seem unthinkable, but consider how little room institutions have to maneuver, and what kinds of things people will believe are possible or desirable when state revenue has utterly collapsed. States that over-rely on sales taxes will be particularly crushed.
Higher Ed is going to need to rally around a narrative that reminds people of their vital role as institutions that benefit the whole public. Unfortunately, they have not been great at fulfilling that role lately. This is going to take a concerted effort to fight for existence.
I'm not at all hopeless because I believe in the mission of these institutions, but they're going to have to fight for the resources that allow them to survive, and if they get those resources, they will have to return to thinking about themselves and operating as public goods.
We probably only get one chance at this and the time to fight will slip by quickly. Watch this space and my blog insidehighered.com/users/john-war… next week for some things I'd love to see us come together and do to demonstrate the value of preserving and even enhancing these institutions.
