Nothing Will Replace Public Higher-Education

Three quick follow-up points. First, a technical one responding to something several people have brought up. I argue: “how much will Yale increase its enrollment numbers as a result of this [Schwarzman $150 million donation]? We can make a good guess: zero. Yale’s freshman enrollment this past year [is] virtually the same as in 2003.”

Yale’s enrollment has not only been flat since 2003 but since around the 1970s, even though the number of students being educated overall has doubled over those 40 years. Some people have noted that there are plans by fall 2017 to increase Yale’s enrollment 15 percent. It’s true, though those plans have been in the works since before the financial crisis and have been significantly delayed, and are unrelated to the Schwarzman donation. The point very much stands.

Some thought this point was a cheap shot, but I think it is crucial to get out there in the debate. Private non-profits pick and choose strategically how to expand enrollment to fufill their private goals, and that’s great. But their goals do not line up with the public one of ensuring that all who qualify has access to quality, affordable higher education, and they certainly won’t step up as that system is pulled back.

Second, the for-profit stories are crazy. I need to be writing more about them, but keep an eye on their implosion, and what it means for privatization and running all government services through for-profit actors. The Corinthian debt-strikers are worth watching as well – here’s Annie Lowrey writing about them and Astra Taylor.

Third, two recommendations. Michelle Goldberg’s long Nation piece on the inequality amplifying consequences of public disinvestment at the University of Arizona, which I link to, is fantastic, and very much worth your time. I also tried to get in this great column by Andrew Hartman on how conservatives used to value mass higher education as a basis of Western Civilization during the Culture Wars – Alan Bloom describing it as “a space between the intellectual wasteland he has left behind and the inevitable dreary professional training that awaits him after the baccalaureate” – but now have traded that battle for one of defunding and privatization, but it didn’t make it. But check out my piece anyway!