This article in The Chronicle of Higher Education tells a fascinating story about the fate of higher education. On February 28, 1967, California Governor Ronald Reagan said that the state could no longer afford “intellectual luxuries,” and that taxpayers should not have to subsidize “intellectual curiosity.”
Dan Berrett writes:
“Sometimes, sea changes in attitude start small, gradually establishing assumptions until no one remembers thinking differently. This is how that happened to liberal education. It’s a story of events on campus and beyond: the oil embargo, the canon wars, federal fiscal policies, the fall of the Soviet Union. On that day in 1967, Reagan crystalized what has since become conventional wisdom about college. In the early 1970s, nearly three-quarters of freshmen said it was essential to them to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. About a third felt the same about being very well off financially. Now those fractions have flipped.”
Now students and policymakers alike see higher education as career training, a way to get a better job. Lost is the idea of learning for learning’s sake. That is an intellectual luxury we can no longer afford or even remember.
– See more at: http://m.chronicle.com/article/The-Day-the-Purpose-of-College/151359/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en#sthash.WZgFNwou.dpuf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
William Deresiewicz expounds on this radical shift in the perceptions of what a college education means. Though his focus is on the so-called “super students”, the central ideas are applicable to all who are contemplating whether to go to college or not, and where on can get a high quality education. Indeed, the system of admissions at the most elite schools is gamed to benefit the wealthiest in the country, the people that can afford to enrich, tutor, prep and pay for their children to compete in the admissions race. A great read.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/books/excellent-sheep-william-deresiewiczs-manifesto.html?referrer=&_r=0
A retrograde turn, one of our country’s great backward leaps. It was my freshman year, I remember talking about it then, and I’ve written about it many times over the past five years.
The purpose of education did not change to getting a job, it changed from advancing society and civilization to serving the perpetual war machine and keeping your mouth shut.
Our entire nation continues to pay for the shortsighted and foolish decisions of Ronald Reagan. His anti-intellectual, anti-union, and anti-civil rights policies and rhetoric have done great damage that will last for generations.
his “aw shucks” lingo might have been a reaction to the Watergate and the anti-vietnam period? people wanted their illusions back and the innocence of what they thought they felt in childhood…. perhaps I am only saying this after reading Perlstein…. but one of his quotes was about “once there was a president who didn’t lie; but, he’s dead” and the U.S. went through a different developmental period? I guess I ended up being a skeptic or a cynic but still hopefully an actively involved in some fashion (not nihilist, not anarchists etc)…. but I remember a childhood of fear about nuclear war (not an “innocence).
I would strongly recommend the Rick Perlstein book that describes how we lived through the changes…. The Invisible Bridge; if you have time for nothing more, just read Chapter 15 The New Right — about textbooks, censorship, the political Mayor Flynn in Boston (desegregation etc)….
Mark Twain said history does not repeat but it rhymes. I especially remember the struggle with the union for the flight controllers and feeling it was ominous what Reagan did at the time. The budgets slashed in California that pushed the mentally ill out into the streets/homelessness….
I thoroughly enjoy the Perlstein books — he says “the internet has made source documentation less useful and that followup on sources no longer requires trips to the archives and libraries. With a few moments of googling he can locate primary sources… and the publishers decided to “put the notes for the book on line”. He suggests try it yourself: google http://newsgoogle.com/newspapers or access university library Proquest Historical Newspapers …. for New York Times or Washington Post…. As a former teacher I find this insufficient for my own purposes and also we need much more assistance in how our students learn this process. I still need a “text” book or a “study” book or a lab manual…. finding it myself on line is risky.
It was a double tragedy…from the Reagan right and the new left as well.
Neither believed in real inquiry or free speech…so a direct line from
Reagan to not only tea party but to present day mainstream Republicans like
Rubio and the latest Bush and Rhee and Coleman and a line too
from SDS to politically correct left who want to ban Huck Finn and who can see
literature. as not universal but only about race and gender.
So the university becomes not a place to become more human–but a
place for robots spouting platitudes.
marek: i don’t understand your point when you say the left” want to ban Huck Finn…. is there some group in particular you are thinking of ? why do you use the term “left”? when you talk about this kind of censorship? I know I generalize to say “there can be fraud on both sides of the aisle” but I have never thought of “left” as being the groups/factions that want to ban books so I am puzzled. I read every banned book I could find in high school and college but I never considered myself a banner of books….
my friends who volunteer at the library have some Sherman Alexei paper back books that are extra from our city wide project two years ago… — if you tell me where they are banned I will be glad to send these extra books to schools ….. (Malden Reads — see their Facebook Page on the books chosen for city-wide reading.. I don’t live in the city but volunteer on this worthy program )
Reagen was also the president that fired the air traffic controllers en masse after a strike. His term marked the beginning of assaults on organized labor.
Yet he courted and won much of the working class vote. Clear example of people voting against their own interests.
It’s because he was an actor and had “screen presence.”
Business and the judicial system changed, as well.
In a 1980’s video series titled, “Ethics in America”, political and business leaders, like Buffet and Guilliani, discussed the long-term, far-reaching consequences of no regulation, for corporate takeovers. The subject was mined in the movie “Wall Street”. “Greed is good”, currently underlies policy in all areas. For a period before Reagan, there was sentimentality for the vulnerable, which protected them from exploitation.
Lewis Powell’s infamous memo set the stage for judicial codification of protected greed.
Linda: thanks for the reminder… I had forgotten Lewis Powell’s influence … and how the great lobbyists took over…. with inspiration from powell.
It is not just that higher education has been robbed of so-called “intellectual luxuries,” the same thinking has permeated pre-K to 12 public education.
Look at the pathetic title for the proposed reauthorization of ESEA –“Every Child Ready for College OR Career,” a real switch from the multiyear sales pitch for the Common Core State Standards as essential for “college AND career.”
In addition to authorizing some serious and early tracking of kids into college or job prep, there is absolutely no attention to the possible merit of studies in the arts and humanities, no formal concern for social studies (or the disciplines encompassed in that construct), no interest in studies of foreign language, not an inch of wiggle room for the education pre-schoolers children unless the “interventions” pay off in grade three reading and math scores, a benchmark that is supposed to PREDICT the chance for students to “succeed” in life.
Of course, some of those “intellectual luxuries” so easily demeaned have had huge, but not immediately obvious economic consequences. Those “luxuries” have also helped to spawn a political class intent on dismissing the value of anything that cannot be monetized.
Years ago a liberal arts degree was valued because the individual was considered to be intelligent enough to train. Now a BA will get someone a cashier job at the mall. Companies don’t want to invest in people anymore. If they can put training responsibilities on colleges, they can make more immediate profit. As a matter of fact, if they can get a robot to do the job, so much the better for them!
‘Companies don’t want to invest in people anymore. If they can put training responsibilities on colleges, they can make more immediate profit.’
I really don’t get why it is now accepted that companies no longer have any responsibility to their communities or to their countrymen.
It’s not a shift in perception so much as it’s the impact of selling a college education as the minimum entry to opportunity. The Educational Industrial Complex has mandated college education for all careers, everyone is expected to go to college… every career, no matter how amendable to on the job training, is funneled through an undergraduate cash cow machine. The focus is shifting from everyone gets a 4 year degree to everyone has the right to a community college education. I guess that’s a signal from the top of the pyramid to slow down production.
this needs to be expanded as an issue/theme….. it has become a locked gate through which fewer people will be allowed to pass. It has been happening to women and known as the “Glass ceiling” and they are using tests/ certificates/ or whatever means to screen people out…. yet they lie and say “freedom”, “choice” , “opportunity”…. orwellian language to disguise the purpose “slow down production” and keep the gates locked….
I guess that’s a signal from the top of the pyramid to slow down production.
jeanhaverhill@aol.com
I disagree with the idea that the idea of college changed because of that one speech. Campus life and the purpose of a college education was already well on its way to changing due to the rapid expansion of universities, especially public ones, thanks to the influx of the Boomers and anti-war (actually anti-draft) protests.
By “intellectual curiosity” Reagan actually meant that taxes should not have to support “experiments in leftist politics”, much in the same vein of anti-choice arguments that government money should not pay for abortions. He was also tapping into a much deeper and older undercurrent of anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism that has characterized American culture and politics.
sharon in NYS:
there was extreme competition between public and private (and it is that way today in teacher training institutes)….
The GI Bill following World War II — Junior Colleges, State Colleges and Universities have in the past lifted many of us out of sheer poverty after from the Great Depression. I am of the opinion that tests were brought into the picture to screen out people who did not fit the profile (it was pretty much a WASP profile at that time if you were trying to get into colleges until the GI Bill opened things up a bit)….
tests had that purpose in mind even back when the SAT was first brought into the picture (an Atlantic article some time ago spelled it out)….
In Massachusetts, Silber wanted to phase out all of the teacher training colleges and have all teachers graduate from BU (at some expense — to the individual and the tax payer); he also had a purpose of finding the non-achieving students in the wealthy , more affluent suburbs but his purpose got de-railed through extremes viewpoints and elitist tests… How can we “open things up” rather than lock people out with “junk tests”?
I went to college on the Vietnam GI Bill—-while also working part time jobs—-and if a test had been in place to rank and bar people like me from college I would have never been allowed in. It took me five years to earn my BA, and I graduated with almost a 4.0 GPA in my major, but I barely graduated from high school with a 0.94 GPA with no intention of ever going to college until the day a sniper almost took me out in Vietnam and I changed my mind.
These tests don’t allow people like me to change our minds. These tests are a crime and the people behind them should be in prison on death row.
replying to Lloyd: those tests are constricting the options of our students who did not get a high school diploma (many but not all with special needs) who , now at 25 to 28 are considering the possibility but all of the goal posts have been moved and they would end up taking much more work and many more tests; from what I understand if you have to re-take the GED test you must take the whole deal all over again (even if you passed something earlier)… my friends tell me the only option they then have for the former student (now 28 or 30 ) is “join up with Job Corps and that is not sufficient to have any kind of avenues to explore. Those who are 45 or up who took a two year associates degree are also locked out of the employment if they have not a 4 year degree; the answer should be more jobs , more opportunities, not fewer opportunities constricted by the “junk science tests’…. it is rationing — education has always been rationed. All of my brothers (and even a niece) benefitted from the GI bill whereas it would have been impossible for them to gather the college experiences without it… and , yes, they all worked (my brothers getting up at 3:00 a.m. to do the milk route before going to school)…. Thank you Lloyd for your service to our military and the protection of this country.
I grew up with severe dyslexia and I think these tests would have doomed me to a life of total failure and misery. And I’m convinced that if I was growing up today in this world of testing mania, I would not have lived to reach 50 because I would have probably ended up on drugs and as an alcoholic and destroyed my health and died due to the test induced depression that would follow test results that kept labeling me annually as a total loser growing up with no hope of a future.
In fact, due to a test that I was given at the age of seven, my mother was told I would never learn to read or write. She heard the same thing about my brother, who was twelve years older than me. He died a broken man, an alcoholic and drug user, at age 64 who lived in poverty most of his life and had seven children who mostly have followed in his footsteps.
But for me, my mother refused to let that test score label me a failure as it has my older brother, and she taught me to read at home turning me into an avid reader who loved reading pulp fantasy and science fiction paperbacks sometimes plowing through two a day when I was in high school ignoring the teachers and the school work.
Lloyd: ” I think these tests would have doomed me to a life of total failure and misery. And I’m convinced that if I was growing up today in this world of testing mania, I would not have lived to reach 50 because I would have probably ended up on drugs and as an alcoholic and destroyed my health and died due to the test induced depression that would follow test results that kept labeling me annually as a total loser growing up with no hope of a future.” My brother had to take a test to get into first grade; going home , my Mom said “you knew the answers to those questions… what happened?” and my 5 1-2 year old brother said “she knew the answers, what was she asking me for?” So he had “psyched ” out the test. My significant other took a test to get into kindergarten or first grade and when the color green was flashed he said “Irish”…. but his mom was from French speaking Canada and his dad was “boston” Irish. These were not legitimate uses of tests …. and they were imperfect tests. These two men were vets from Korean War — both are deceased — but I have kept the experiences in my mind…. why do we do this to our kids? And, you are correct the consequences in their lives are humungous, tremendous and we push them into the paths of the on-coming risks and then say “well you had a free choice” and we fall into the current vogue of choice psychology…. etc…. But I just wanted you to know I hear you and your experience parallels experiences of the men that were growing up with me.
the reformers claim we have “free choice” but we don’t when they erect a wall of bubble tests to limit those choices.
Lloyd: You should read what Stephen Krashen says about self selected recreational reading. Your life story confirms his research. The Common Core will discourage struggling readers that are “hard to start.”http://skrashen.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-common-core-disrespects-self.html
When I was a child and then a teen, I read what I wanted—not what the teachers assigned. And when I was in 10th grade, I signed up as a student library assistant and helped out in the library one period a day for three years. That was the only grade I earned that was an A every semester.
Working in the library also introduced me to books I wouldn’t have read and I ended up reading historical fiction that covered much of Western history. While I was ignoring the lectures in history classes, I was reading about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, etc. from best selling, award winning historical fiction authors.
Bubble tests that rank and fail students would never achieve this—never!
Jeanhaverhill, respectfully, I have no idea what your response has to do with my interpretation of Reagan’s speech.
quote: “…changing due to the rapid expansion of universities, especially public ones, thanks to the influx of the Boomers and anti-war (actually anti-draft) protests.” this statement has the opportunity to respond with a divergent view. Sorry if my response was too divergent for your [premise…. I didn’t see the statement as a test of my literal interpretations but the opportunity to look at historical “changes” or points in time when major changes might have taken place… a lot happened along the way … even before the era you depict and it played out differently in each state (some states offering much more in the way of budgets for public education )… that is a predicament we find ourselves in today ; the states are not providing the funding and it is left to individual students and the corporations have moved in where the states abandoned the students . So , given that thought, I respectfully do not understand why you pinpointed the “boomers” as the entry point for your description of change. But none of this will advance the discussion any further and only force people to draw lines — including some and excluding others. That was one of my major points…. I couldn’t fully gather your cause -effect logic “due to the influx of Boomers and anti-war”….???? so we are off on two different tangents.
Well said Sharon! I think that Sharon actually demonstrates the fallacy of David Coleman’s notion of “close reading” without understanding context. In addition, however, Reagan did like the ideas of conservative intellectuals like Russell Kirk, F.A. Hayek, and of course Milton Friedman. If you wonder where we get the Deion Sanders charter type schools, read Friedman and his ideas of the “free market, vouchers and choice!” We might also think about the GI Bill and ask ourselves to what degree this Bill was about simple intellectual growth of returning GIs after WWII, GIs getting greater opportunities for jobs, or a way to soften the labor glut after WWII?
Tom
Thank you, Tom. : )
“The purpose of a liberal education (liberal arts) is so that one can tell whether or not another is talking rot” Forget who said this, but it is pretty comprehensive. The lack of ability to do this explains why FOX “News” etc can get away with doing what they do, saying what they say. We seem to be becoming a nation of sheep, minds formed by crafted “sound bites” , however absurd, making up the mind set of so many who are allowed to vote.
This article brought back strong memories. I was pushed into a business degree by my parents in the 80’s. I remember feeling so constrained by my classes and yearning to take some electives, but the business major did not allow any. I wanted to explore, instead I was inundated with math, math and more math. Its not that I do not like math, I do, but I just wanted some freedom to pick and choose things that interested me. By the time I went to grad school, education interested me and my passion grew as I learned more. I never had that passion in business, it was a chore. There were some classes that were interesting, but mostly everything was scripted.
Not so unlike our K-12 schools today. I know that I always yearned for the “recess” that I was afforded as a student for my own students.
L. Evanko: this reminds me of my sister-in-law who wanted to be a vet and her dad said “we have money for nursing school” but she dropped out…. My niece who was forced into “distributive ed” and didn’t finish her liberal arts degree until she was 28 (whereas her brothers all graduated U. Texas at 21)…. or my niece in FL who was forced to study to be a CPA — until she told her dad I fall asleep when they send me out on those audits…. As I mentioned above there have been glass ceilings for decades… I’m glad you could see your way through the maze. Other kinds of obstacles were in the way for the male students — the registration for draft being a major one….
Jean. You just made me remember that it took me 8 years to graduate with my B.S. I went to work full time and school at night. I wonder if there is a correlation between students who choose their major freely compared to students who are forced into a major and the time it takes to complete it.
It seems that almost everything horrible happening in America today can be traced back to that B-rated actor, Ronald Reagan, and the far right conservatives who have made him their god.
Regan was the mouthpiece for the free-market mantra from Milton Friedman.
TRAGIC. Just in one area: science. Universities were once working on basic science, intellectual curiosity into the basic parts of science. Now universities rely on corporate money to “research” areas in which they have an interest and which too often is used to promote their interests, not necessarily in the truthfulness of what that research produces. Scientists have to rely on corporate money.
How long can this kind of nonsense go on?
We need “truth” from out educational institutions, not corporate greed which uses taxpayer money to fund them and then too many do not even pay income taxes, they move out of the country which supported them ad nauseum.
Education is losing its basic reason for existence. Not education but training and/or propaganda.
[steps on to soapbox]
We are seeing played out within higher education, on a highly cynical level I must add, the same tensions that have existed in American higher education since the 19th century, between a liberal-arts education to create discerning, well-rounded *minds* and practial education that will have demonstrable economic value.
The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 was the first major attempt by our government to expand the idea of a college education as practical, accessible to the average person, and (more importantly and controversially in that era) non-sectarian. All other government programs to encourage college-for-all really derive from the Morrill Act.
It’s a worth goal, I believe, to combine these competing philosophies as long as we remain vigiliant against abusive incursions of corporate greed and political control into academic pursuits.
[steps down off soapbox]
“taxpayers should not have to subsidize “intellectual curiosity.”
This has become the mantra of both political parties, who have become anti-intellectual and anti-scientific.
Teacher bashing is just a symptom of this problem.
this is one of the most important posts I’ve read from her, this is where higher education went south
WordPress.com dianeravitch posted: “This article in The Chronicle of Higher Education tells a fascinating story about the fate of higher education. On February 28, 1967, California Governor Ronald Reagan said that the state could no longer afford “intellectual luxuries,” and that taxpayers “
Here’s another “gift” from Reagan: before Regan, children whose parent(s) died could get Social Security Survivor’s benefits to age 22, if they were enrolled in college or a vocational program; then Reagan spearheaded changes to Social Security that cut that benefit off at 18.
Republican Paul Ryan famously got through college on those benefits, but so did my college roommate, Jenelle. She wouldn’t have been able to afford college without it. So chalk that up to another way getting a college degree has been made harder.
SDP,
Respectfully, it is not all science that is rejected. Science that thwarts profit opportunity for plutocrats, receives a dressing down, lower visibility and/or annihilation.
MIT, by reputation, a bastion of science is formally, the MIT Corporation. It is the alma mater of Fred, Charles and David Koch. David is a lifetime member of the Board. Currently, there’s a bit of a rift at MIT over climate change. MIT environmental scientists oppose denial, which is reportedly at odds with oligarch mantra.
IMO, MIT economists (assuming the practice of economics is a science), skew research focus to areas that can generate profits, like privatized education and pensions. I’d like to see a public interest group review focus and paper content and, render a decision. If identification, as right-leaning, like Mercatus, is appropriate, a note by media in reporting would be beneficial. It would also aid in college selection, for students.
Religious rejection of science-what can one say?
Economics is the “dismal science”.
Let us not forget his wife’s brilliant approach to America’s substance abuse issues: Just Say No. Our LIBERAL MEDIA was complicit in promoting the worst President of the 20th century. There’s one of the great lies of our time, “liberal media”, i.e. knuckleheads like Chris Matthews praising Michelle Rhee.
Open inquiry at universities…… not, now.
Charles Koch in a 1974 speech, posted at Greenpeace, “We should … finance only
….those programs, departments and schools that contribute in some way to our individual companies or….free enterprise.”
More than 200 colleges, take Koch money. Many of them are Catholic, despite the Pope’s message and, many of them are public universities, despite being built on the idea of pooled taxes and the collective good.
Foremost measurement of university presidents- how much money they raise-civilization fail.
The Koch brothers are Catholics. Maybe the Koch brothers also want to also take over the Catholic Church and replace the Pope or at least control the Pope. Heck, the Koch brothers probably want to rule the world.
Lloyd,
I think they already do. Their ideological pal, Gates, gave $1,000,000 to the PTA, earmarking it for Common Core. Then, the Gates-funded Educator Teacher Cadre tours the state citing the PTA as proof of community support.
The corporate reformers have been using their wealth to buy more than the PTA. They seem to have targeted every private sector non profit, profit and govenrment agency they can hit with these bribes they call grants.
An unmentioned crucial ingredient… The hugely consequential 1971 Powell Memo. “Expanding corporate influence over the U.S. educational system was one
of the crucial themes of Powell’s memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Corporate power in society gained longevity from influencing the
opinions of educated young adults about to enter the workforce and
helped reshape institutions of higher learning to prioritize commercial
interests.” http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/The-Lewis-Powell-Memo/education/