I'm not sure I follow. Are we now talking about the financial impact on all of education from Student Loans? I agree that the program has had unintended consequences on the entire Higher Education cost structure, but the relationship to Private/Public institutions is not linear. That is, student loans have increased the cost of all education. We could (and should) try to 'un-distort' the funding for Higher Ed. But, that way leads to unpacking assumptions about how the fundings is being used. Are we funding the Student to access all education opportunities, or are we funding institutions, or are we going to create two tiers of Education: one Publicly Funded and the one where the Good Jobs (tm) come from.
"That doesn’t mean the government can just come in and shut things down for no reason other than speech it doesn’t like"
There's a very, very thin line between it working like that and it not... and that line is independent accrediting agencies. Right now there are multiple (mostly regional) accrediting agencies that give schools enough room to work with this agency rather than that agency which keeps the process somewhat solvent.
There are a handful of schools that take 0% funding from Govt for just that reason... ironically if we wanted to use the heavy hand of Govt funding to coerce the Private Schools into one direction or another, then the Ivies would drop Govt funding, but many (but not all) smaller mission driven schools would fold.
It would look a lot like suppression of speech, and probably would be...
Not surprisingly, I think the funding is to the Student and not to the Schools... and, as long as the schools meet a minimum agreed upon standard, then that funding is the Student's to dispense. Which, via accreditation, is pretty much what we have now.
Heh, only accidentally; it's definitely not the core mission.
Mostly because that's a Motte/Bailey argument... for every past societal wrong that we all agree is a societal wrong and is being addressed through ordinary culture, there's 1000 imagined societal wrongs where the imaginers are wrong and are forcing wrongness via institutional capture -- that's a form of liberal totalitarianism.
Here's the weird counter-intuitive Marchmaine take: I'm ok with *Private* universities/colleges having, say, a DEI litmus test... if that's the driving principle of your Academy, then you should screen for it as to how the faculty you hire will contribute to that understanding.
As I've written before, the issue with the Ivies is that they were a proxy for *Public* meritocracy... they aren't any more, and that's ok. If the Ivies want to reclaim a sort of public position of eminence, they will need to rebuild it according to whatever lights they want to follow. But as Private Universities, they are entitled to drive their projects off any cliff they want.
State funded universities/colleges (and k-12), however, need to be neutral institutions... 'Mere' Education if you will. We could call them an Enlightenment Project if helpful. In some ways, this is the real 'fight'... as the Ivies have gone, so has much of Academia. And it's easy to understand, Academia is firstly a giant crab-bucket of status, and gathering status is a complex networking game; understand that, and you've understood the fundamental alignment of incentives that drive hiring decisions and grant funding.
Back to Notre Dame and the post-modern (et al.) University... when I was there in the 80s & 90s, there was a recognition that a lot of the old 'assumptions' about how things worked and would continue to work were being actively undermined; deconstructed, if you will. Now, I've always been a reform/rebuild/renew sort of 'conservative' but deconstruction isn't that. A number of reasonable folks suggested a 'dialogue' about -- and I'm not making this up -- The Catholic Character of Notre Dame. The goal was extremely mild: The University has a Catholic charter, and anyone looking to join the faculty (and staff) should be aware of that Charter, and should be able to state how they would 'participate or contribute' to that charter. There was no litmus test for Catholics. In fact, one of the actual issues was that too many faculty would 'check the catholic box' and avoid the issue; while many non-Catholics appreciated the Charter and had significant contributions to make (including prominent Non-Catholics such as Alvin Plantiga, George Marsden, and David Solomon just to name a few). The split wasn't over Catholic vs. Non-Catholic, it was over Relevance vs. Irrelevance ... and Relevance won, and won hard. But what was Relevance? Was is a better Truth? A better mission? No, it was chasing clout; academic clout being determined by the post-modern deconstructionists and the critical theory proponents. The STEM folks thought they were exempt from that debate, until they weren't. But Liberal Arts? They gave up the ghost willingly.
Long story short? The academic game required hiring the sort of people that were vetted by the Tier 1s so that their work might be elevated via the networks. As the Tier 1s went, so went anyone with any sort of ambition... personal, scholastic, or institutional. And while that's not 100% of academics, it's close to 100% of the Academics and Staff who 'matter' in setting the direction of the Departments, the Colleges, and the University itself.
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I'm not sure I follow. Are we now talking about the financial impact on all of education from Student Loans? I agree that the program has had unintended consequences on the entire Higher Education cost structure, but the relationship to Private/Public institutions is not linear. That is, student loans have increased the cost of all education. We could (and should) try to 'un-distort' the funding for Higher Ed. But, that way leads to unpacking assumptions about how the fundings is being used. Are we funding the Student to access all education opportunities, or are we funding institutions, or are we going to create two tiers of Education: one Publicly Funded and the one where the Good Jobs (tm) come from.
To pick at your pick...
"That doesn’t mean the government can just come in and shut things down for no reason other than speech it doesn’t like"
There's a very, very thin line between it working like that and it not... and that line is independent accrediting agencies. Right now there are multiple (mostly regional) accrediting agencies that give schools enough room to work with this agency rather than that agency which keeps the process somewhat solvent.
There are a handful of schools that take 0% funding from Govt for just that reason... ironically if we wanted to use the heavy hand of Govt funding to coerce the Private Schools into one direction or another, then the Ivies would drop Govt funding, but many (but not all) smaller mission driven schools would fold.
It would look a lot like suppression of speech, and probably would be...
Not surprisingly, I think the funding is to the Student and not to the Schools... and, as long as the schools meet a minimum agreed upon standard, then that funding is the Student's to dispense. Which, via accreditation, is pretty much what we have now.
Heh, only accidentally; it's definitely not the core mission.
Mostly because that's a Motte/Bailey argument... for every past societal wrong that we all agree is a societal wrong and is being addressed through ordinary culture, there's 1000 imagined societal wrongs where the imaginers are wrong and are forcing wrongness via institutional capture -- that's a form of liberal totalitarianism.
::Elrond I was there.gif::
I was at the opposite end of Berkley: Notre Dame.
Here's the weird counter-intuitive Marchmaine take: I'm ok with *Private* universities/colleges having, say, a DEI litmus test... if that's the driving principle of your Academy, then you should screen for it as to how the faculty you hire will contribute to that understanding.
As I've written before, the issue with the Ivies is that they were a proxy for *Public* meritocracy... they aren't any more, and that's ok. If the Ivies want to reclaim a sort of public position of eminence, they will need to rebuild it according to whatever lights they want to follow. But as Private Universities, they are entitled to drive their projects off any cliff they want.
State funded universities/colleges (and k-12), however, need to be neutral institutions... 'Mere' Education if you will. We could call them an Enlightenment Project if helpful. In some ways, this is the real 'fight'... as the Ivies have gone, so has much of Academia. And it's easy to understand, Academia is firstly a giant crab-bucket of status, and gathering status is a complex networking game; understand that, and you've understood the fundamental alignment of incentives that drive hiring decisions and grant funding.
Back to Notre Dame and the post-modern (et al.) University... when I was there in the 80s & 90s, there was a recognition that a lot of the old 'assumptions' about how things worked and would continue to work were being actively undermined; deconstructed, if you will. Now, I've always been a reform/rebuild/renew sort of 'conservative' but deconstruction isn't that. A number of reasonable folks suggested a 'dialogue' about -- and I'm not making this up -- The Catholic Character of Notre Dame. The goal was extremely mild: The University has a Catholic charter, and anyone looking to join the faculty (and staff) should be aware of that Charter, and should be able to state how they would 'participate or contribute' to that charter. There was no litmus test for Catholics. In fact, one of the actual issues was that too many faculty would 'check the catholic box' and avoid the issue; while many non-Catholics appreciated the Charter and had significant contributions to make (including prominent Non-Catholics such as Alvin Plantiga, George Marsden, and David Solomon just to name a few). The split wasn't over Catholic vs. Non-Catholic, it was over Relevance vs. Irrelevance ... and Relevance won, and won hard. But what was Relevance? Was is a better Truth? A better mission? No, it was chasing clout; academic clout being determined by the post-modern deconstructionists and the critical theory proponents. The STEM folks thought they were exempt from that debate, until they weren't. But Liberal Arts? They gave up the ghost willingly.
Long story short? The academic game required hiring the sort of people that were vetted by the Tier 1s so that their work might be elevated via the networks. As the Tier 1s went, so went anyone with any sort of ambition... personal, scholastic, or institutional. And while that's not 100% of academics, it's close to 100% of the Academics and Staff who 'matter' in setting the direction of the Departments, the Colleges, and the University itself.