Public education should be free.
If it isn't free, it isn't public education.
Aaron Bady. Al Jazeera.
This should not be a
controversial assertion. This should be common sense. But Americans have
forgotten what the "public" in "public education" actually
means (or used to mean). The problem is that the word no longer has anything to
refer to: This country's public universities have been radically transformed.
The change has happened so slowly and so gradually — bit by bit, cut by cut
over half a century — that it can be seen really only in retrospect. But
with just a small amount of historical perspective, the change is dramatic:
public universities that once charged themselves to open their doors to all who
could benefit by attending — that were, by definition, the public property of
the entire state — have become something entirely different.
What we still call public
universities would be more accurately described as state-controlled private
universities — corporate entities that think and behave like businesses.
Whereas there once was a public mission to educate the republic's citizens,
there is now the goal of satisfying the educational needs of the market, aided
by PR departments that brand degrees as commodities and build consumer
interest, always with an eye to the bottom line. And while public universities
once sought to advance the industry of the state as a whole, with an eye to the
common good, shortfalls in public funding have led to universities' treating
their research capacity as a source of primary fundraising, developing new
technologies and products for the private sector, explicitly to raise the money
they need to operate. Conflicts of interest are now commonplace.
