Primer: Abolish Public Universities
Colleges have been in the news lately. Pro-Palestinian protests rocked campuses across the country for a few weeks, which provoked both forceful police encounters and agreements with protestors – both of which drew sharp criticism from the public and politicians. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, after the Supreme Court shot down his original plan, has been pushing new strategies for broad student debt forgiveness before the November election. And public opinion on colleges has shifted rapidly in the last decade: the percentage of Americans expressing high confidence in higher education fell from 57% to 36%, and there are 3 million fewer undergraduate students now than in 2011. This leads to the resolution of Political Union’s general-member debate for this quarter: Public universities should be abolished.
The number one reason why public universities should be abolished is that they’re no longer necessary. Two-thirds of high school students believe they would be fine without a college degree, and this is the result of the digital revolution. Education can take different forms because of the abundance of information easily accessible with the Internet, so a four-year degree isn’t as valuable as it once was. Further, today’s tight labor market and the return of state-driven industrial policy is pushing employers to drop college degrees as a job requirement as they instead prioritize skills-based approaches. If employers are no longer impressed by a degree, then it is illogical to put yourself into decades-long debt to go to school. Lastly, the encampments exemplified how campuses can be drivers of wide social unrest, which can be dangerous. The government should not be using valuable tax dollars, then, to fund institutions that are no longer crucial for the education of society, put millions in debt, and are hotbeds for conflict. Billions of dollars could be diverted to more worthy causes if public universities are abolished.
But the con side has a very strong argument. First, in an incredibly general sense, it goes without saying that education is a good thing. Having a population that is more well-read, mathematically capable, and grounded in problem-solving is obviously valuable. Public schools have graduated hundreds of millions professionals, accounted for hundreds of Nobel prizes, and are widely remembered as some of the best years of life by the population. College graduates make up a disproportionate amount of the country’s GDP: they are the most prized, smartest workers that drive innovation and excellence at the forefront of our economy. Keeping college available for a wide swath of the population would allow more Americans opportunities to become one of these workers. Just because the digital revolution has changed the way our economy works doesn’t mean public education can’t adjust. And the rising cost of tuition is a solvable problem – that’s what the President is trying to do. Further, the abolition of public education would encourage social rigidity in American society, as those who can afford the high costs of private school can maintain their upper class status while others cannot go to college. The reallocation of tax dollars from colleges to other programs may result in short-term benefits, but the long-run outcome of deteriorating human capital across the country would hurt tax revenues anyways. It is naive and harmful to suggest public universities are not valuable institutions, and they should be protected.
Please join the debate this Monday at 7pm in Scott Hall 201!
"Foellinger Auditorium, University of Illinois" by VSmithUK is licensed under CC BY 2.0.