General Discussion

This goes back to 1954, when, in the midst of a boom in college graduates and a rise in the middle class, a conservative political scientist/philosopher named Russell Kirk came out with a book titled "The Conservative Mind." In it he postulated that the rising numbers of folks who were middle class, and the rising numbers of college graduates was a bad thing, a threat to orderly society. His prediction was that if people were better off, and better educated these masses would start agitating for things like expanded civil rights, more government benefits like single payer health care, etc. At the time, and for about ten years afterwards he was laughed out of the park.

Fast forward to the mid'60's, the Civil Rights movement is achieving victories, anti war protests are in full swing, kids are burning draft cards, the gay rights movement, the women's movement were waiting in the wings, it looked to conservatives that the country was going crazy. To quote the godfather of rap, Gil Scott-Heron, "First one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom." Conservatives freaked, then recalledthat book they scorned a decade earlier, by God, Kirk was right, an expanded middle class, more folks with a college education, it rips apart the social order. The middle class becomes more demanding, college kids are more liberal, they had to shut it all down.

The seventies were not a favorable time to start the process of turning that ship around, though some progress was made. The oil embargo and subsequent recession cut into the middle class a bit. It was also the time when wages, minimum and otherwise, stopped keeping up with inflation. Reagan, as governor of California, eliminated free tuition in the state's college system. But outside matters kind of derailed the work of being a wrecking ball. The whole Nixon fiasco, Ford was a placeholder put in for one reason, to pardon Nixon, and Carter simply wasn't going to join in.

But here came Ronnie Reagan in the eighties, he broke the back of the unions, pared down tuition assistance to virtually nothing, privatized the student loan process, the carnage was breathtaking. Subsequent presidents followed along, off shoring our manufacturing sector, turning academic institutions into cash cows, etc.

Long story short, they are successfully breaking the middle class. The percentage of the population in the middle class has gone from a high of 65% in the mid '60's down to 44% now, and that number continues to fall. While the percentage of our population with a college degree has risen from 11%, to 37%, the war on higher ed has left a mark. A couple of generations deeply, and seemingly perpetually in dept. Small colleges all over the country are closing, especially in rural areas. Colleges and universities are now havens for big business. When your future career is on the line, when you owe a shit ton of money, you're less likely to rock the boat. That's one reason the establishment freaked at the pro-Palestinian protests, the last time they had seen a multi campus occurrence of civil disobedience was forty years ago.

So the war on higher ed continues with renewed vigor, and the numbers show the story, a year over year drop in graduates the past few years. Funding being withheld. Trump is attacking the Ivy League as part of this assault, though he might have his own personal motivations. Antisemitism accusations are just the latest excuse to destroy academics.