RIDGELAND — The whole enterprise of higher learning in the United States has been under an ongoing siege in recent years. Most of the abuse has been cast from the right. Tales of safe spaces and trigger warnings for certain student cohorts confirm a suspicion that college has become an expensive babysitting service. Critics also point to events at the University of California at Berkeley and Middlebury College in Vermont as evidence of “social justice warriors” denying conservatives an access to the public square.
Those on the left have certainly felt their own outrage over recent events in higher education. This past spring brought news of an admissions scandal in which wealthy individuals paid enormous bribes to ensure their children’s entry into prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Southern California. Progressives cite this episode as evidence that persons lacking wealth or power, particularly minorities, are disproportionately excluded from America’s most elite institutions.
Oberlin College is the latest battleground over free speech on the campus and the question of how far representatives of an educational institution can go when making public accusations. A Lorain County, Ohio, jury recently awarded a local bakery $11 million in compensatory damages and an additional $33 million in punitive damages. Students, supported by faculty and a dean at Oberlin, targeted Gibson’s Bakery for protests and boycotts after an African-American student was arrested for shoplifting. Conservatives hail the victory as a signal to colleges and their social justice warriors that they cannot impose their own versions of the truth upon the community and ruin innocent lives and businesses. Liberals are concerned that free speech on college campuses may be curtailed if administrators fear they will be held liable for whatever their students say and do in public.
The ongoing presentations of such events in the news does give the impression that institutions of higher learning have become centers of intellectual despotism as opposed to places of open inquiry and a sharing of diverse beliefs. This impression is false when applied to the larger landscape of four-year colleges. Those institutions mentioned above are elite. The reality is quite different in typical state universities, land-grant institutions and historically black institutions of higher learning.
There are nearly 2,500 four-year institutions of higher learning in the United States. More than 1,800 of these are private. The vast majority of colleges and universities are primarily concerned with keeping their doors open and providing quality programs that will meet professional and market needs in their respective states and communities. Most of their students, while enjoying the extracurricular offerings of college life, are attempting to graduate. They may not be hired by the most exclusive corporations nor enter the law schools at Harvard or Yale. What they will do is find jobs or enter graduate programs in one of their state universities. They will start families and contribute to their own communities.
Higher education in America is threatened not by political correctness, trigger warnings or safe spaces. It is endangered by declining resources and a skeptical public. This is unfortunate. Higher education remains one of the most solid investments in America’s future.
• Vincent J. Venturini is a retired associate provost at Mississippi Valley State University. He lives in Ridgeland.
