The Education Solution Is Privatization

A new Vice Chancellor, John Hood, has recommended “replacing the traditional system of governance with a more ‘top-down’ managerial approach,” according to Martin Jacomb in The Spectator. But the professors voted Hood’s proposals down 730 votes to 456. Shades of Larry Summers and Harvard faculty.

The problem at Oxford is money. It relies enormously on government money, and the government money isn’t enough to fund competitive salaries for academic superstars and for decent undergraduate education.

John Hood wants to beef up the central administration so that it can start doing some serious fundraising, after the example of US universities. And he wants to increase student fees and put the money into undergraduate teaching.

But to Jacomb, that is only dealing with half of the problem. It is not just shortage of money from the government that is hurting Oxford. It is the government control. And the record of government control of universities is not reassuring.

[R]eliance on government money inevitably brings with it a reluctance to reject the orthodox thinking of the day. We all learnt how Pope Urban VIII (who was the government) dealt with Galileo when he produced some thinking which the Pope did not like... Does anyone doubt that Milton Friedman could have achieved what he did anywhere other than in a truly independent university; in his case, Chicago?
...
And history also tells a frightening story. German universities, which included some of the best in the world a century ago, became totally dependent on government money after the inflation of the 1920s; and, sure enough, most appointed posts were already held by Nazi sympathisers before the First Supplemental Decree (Aryans only) came into force in 1935.

Even in the United States the universities are far too dependent on the government. For one thing, most of the research money comes from outfits like the National Science Foundation. Then there is a lot of research in the social sciences for which the only purpose is to assist the government in the expansion of its programs of social control.

What will it take for the professors to decide that they would rather be independent and free than dependent and subservient to the government?

It’s the great question of the age. Up to now, the professors have positively luxuriated in their lapdog relation to the corridors of political power. They accept the dictates of government and think up rationales to justify them, and happily assist the government in its attack on private institutions from corporations to churches and college fraternities.

That means that We the People are going to have to separate the universities from the government. That ain’t gonna be easy.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close 0