Adventures in Academia: The Long Battle to Defend Education
Thursday, April 15th, 2010 | By Danny Crichton
Higher education, the very source of American prosperity over the last 50 years, is now very much at risk in the United States. All one has to do is look at California, which offers perhaps one of the best vantage points to see this destruction of education in action. The state was once the shining beacon of higher education, building the vast University of California system that would make the state one of the most dynamic economies in the world.The state, once merely mired in perennial budget wars, has now waged an aggressive war against higher education, furloughing professor and cutting large swaths of students out of the system.
I wish it were only the budget cuts that were harming the system. An upturn in the economy and more flush revenues could easily lead to a reversal of the higher education downturn. Alas, budget cuts are only the most recent attack on America’s economic crown jewels.
As the number of laws regulating universities increase with each successive year, the administration of the modern university grows ever more complex. Universities in the 1960s had significantly smaller staffs compared to our universities today, where the typical research university now requires thousands of personnel to handle dense regulations while also providing an ever-expanding