The Disinvestment in Public Higher Education

Abstract

America's rise in the World has many reasons. One of the most siginificant is upper mobility. Americans are not limited by caste, class, ethnic background, national origin, religion, race, skin color, accent, or gender. The key to success for most Americans is a system of higher education par excellence.

Education was viewed as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the New World. Harvard was initially funded by a grant from the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. America led the world in mandating secondary education. Public univesities have existed for over two centuries in America, led by the chartering of the University of North Carolina in 1789.

The concept of land grants to fund education originated with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia and Benjamin Franklin the University of Pennsylvania.

The Morrill Act of 1862 created the public land grant universities, which became the core of the public higher education system in most states. Subsequent acts furthered public higher education. The combination of the exisiting public universities and the land grant institutions marked the ascendancy of public higher education outside the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

The post-World War II boom in public funding for higher education resulted in changing the paradigm from one of elitism to that of universal access. Scores of public institutions, especially the masters and community colleges, opened their doors.

From the days of their formation, many of the public institutions led the way in offering affordabiltiy and accessibility to higher education for their residents, and in opening their doors to women students as well as racial and religious minorities. They soon added professional schools to their offerings.

That was then. State spending on higher education is discretionary and is increasingly being squeezed by mandates, especially medicaid. Periodic budget crisis further reduce state spending; the early part of the New Millenium was especially devastating to the finances of the public institutions. Large tuition increses coupled with substantial budget cuts, curricular cuts, and matriculation of high tuition, non-residents to offset the budget cuts is threatening accessibility and affordability, especially at the flagship universities. Michigan, for example, is now a quasi-private university.

Keywords: Public Universities, Higher Education, Accessibility and affordability, Disinvestment