University and State - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe
states build universities to achieve certain goals—to gain informed citizens, cultivate an appreciation for the civilization, advance scientific progress. They have provided money and infrastructure to achieve these goals. States can and must demand that its goals be achieved. State legislatures and boards of trustees should eagerly seek to ensure that the public’s legitimate concern about the nature of education is vindicated.
When the funding source shifts to the state, educational institutions become oriented toward pleasing government officials. Professors who do not fit the narrow ideological band of those who are in power today become liabilities to politicians who are at the whims of the election cycle.
They are writing in the context of a debate over the role of government officials in general, and state legislators in particular, in addressing ideological bias in higher education.
It seems odd to claim that universities are the way they are because they are “pleasing government officials.” It seems to me that they are way too far to the left for that to be the case.
