Trump is right to call them 'government schools'

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Trump said, “no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school." Although reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post have already taken issue with the terminology, Trump is absolutely right to call them “government schools” instead of "public schools." Here’s why.

Trump was referring to schools that are run by the government. Although the federal government does not directly operate individual schools, they are controlled by school districts, which are local government entities. These schools are also funded by a mix of federal, state, and local tax dollars that come with large amounts of regulations from various government agencies.

Calling these schools “public” is inaccurate for a few reasons. For one, these schools are not open to all members of the public. Because children are generally assigned to schools in the United States by residence, government-run schools regularly exclude students based on their ZIP codes.

In fact, several parents have been fined and even sent to jail for trying to get their children into better government schools by lying about their residences. Government-run magnet schools often use selective admissions processes. The government also compels us to attend schools and pay for their services regardless of how satisfied we are with the product.

Furthermore, government-run schooling is not a “public good,” according to the economic definition. A “public good” is both nonexcludable and nonrivalrous, and government-run schools fail both conditions. Schools can (and do) exclude people, and there are only a limited number of seats in each classroom.

It’s also not clear that government schools are even providing a meaningful “public benefit” since many of them consistently underperform despite getting more money year after year.

Using the term “government school” is also beneficial because it provides clarity to discussions about the education system. Because privately run charter schools are considered “public schools” by the Department of Education and many other government and nongovernment entities, using the term “public school” in conversations requires unnecessary clarification.

“Government school” is the most accurate term to use. The schools are government-run and government-funded. This fact makes people who defend the government-run school system very uncomfortable. But instead of trying to hide the fact that the government runs our schools, defenders of the status quo should think about why the truth about our education system makes them feel so uncomfortable.

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Affordable College Is Here

At TEL Library we’ve taken a major step toward reducing the cost of college with the launch of our Courses-on-Demand program. Through this program, students anywhere in the U.S. can take college courses that are entirely self-paced and allow students to start anytime they desire. The all-inclusive cost of these courses is $44 per credit hour, which includes all fees and course materials.

For those waxing nostalgic about the good old days when college was affordable, this is better than the good old days. Inflation-adjusted to 1970 dollars, our pricing translated to $6.68 a credit hour, and that’s without a dime of state or federal subsidy.

TEL Library is a non-profit educational publishing and technology organization located in Oklahoma City. Our mission is to make a quality college education affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time. We aren’t an accredited college, but rather partner with regionally accredited colleges and universities to provide online and blended college general education and advanced high school courses. We piloted our courses with 998 students in 2019 and are now making them available to the public through our Courses-on-Demand program.

Our Courses-on-Demand program is designed for people who are


Current college students taking a few courses through TEL to speed up degree completion and lower the total cost (e.g. summer school),

High school students wanting college credit independent of their high school’s dual credit program,

Homeschoolers,

Non-traditional students taking a few courses to ease into, or finish up, a degree program, and

Life-learners wanting a structured learning experience.  Anybody 13 or older can enroll.


Currently, we have 16 courses available, such as U.S. History I, Chemistry, Literature & Composition, and Quantitative Analysis. By fall 2020, we’ll have added three more courses, and by fall 2021, we should have a complete catalog of general education courses. That’s more than 80 credit hours, or well over two years of college.

With the Courses-on-Demand Program, students enroll online to take TEL courses, which have been reviewed and approved for college credit by partner universities. Courses may vary somewhat by partner college based on the partner college’s academic standards and institutional mission. Students are not eligible for financial aid or partner college support services (e.g. counseling services, professional development activities, internships).

Upon successful completion of a course, a partner university awards credit to the student and provides a transcript reflecting the letter grade earned. Credits from these courses count toward a degree at the partner university, or can generally be transferred to another regionally accredited college.

The student pays $99 per course for a 3-credit-hour course. That $99 includes all course materials and instruction, as well as technology and exam proctoring fees. In addition, the student pays the partner college a $200 annual enrollment fee that covers up to six courses, then $33 for any courses above the six-course limit. If the student only takes one course in the year, their cost is $299, or $100 a credit hour. For six courses and up, the student pays $44 a credit hour. That means a student can take a year of college for $1,320.

Our initial partner college is Greenville University in Illinois. We will be adding additional partners in the future. All partner colleges for the Courses-on-Demand program are regionally accredited colleges. That accreditation is important for purposes of easy transferability. Course credits from a regionally accredited college are almost universally accepted by colleges anywhere in the United States.

Some colleges limit the number of credit hours they will accept from other institutions, but this is not a problem for our students. Except for some of the toniest of private institutions, colleges generally accept two or more years of transfer credit toward a degree. The most common problem with course-transfer is that some courses do not align precisely with a similar course required at a particular college. In such cases, the student still receives credit for their transferred coursework but may also have to take the college’s required course. Given the fairly generic coverage of general education courses, this is usually not an issue for our courses.

TEL Library courses are for almost everyone except those who aren’t willing to study. Each course requires 145 to 155 hours of study. While our content is rigorous, it is also understandable. Our lessons are intentionally designed to provide a clear context for each course concept, and then move students through the stages of information elaboration, relevance, agency, and mastery. That design allows students to absorb the information more readily and apply it in meaningful ways. Courses consist of 10 to 15 modules, and each module contains 4 to 6 lessons.

Courses have multiple assessment methods to move students toward comprehension. Each lesson contains a formative self-check quiz that students can take as many times as they wish for study and review. Each module contains a short auto-graded quiz over the lessons in that module. Communication and English Composition courses require five written essays or recorded speeches that are human graded. All other courses have a summative midterm and final exam.

TEL Library courses are for almost everyone except those who aren’t willing to study.

These auto-graded exams are proctored online through integration with MonitorEDU. Online proctoring allows the student to take the exam anywhere they have an internet connection. MonitorEDU provides 24/7 live exam proctoring using a computer or smartphone video camera and screen-capture technology to assist the student with any technical question—and to monitor for cheating. The process is extremely convenient for the student and less susceptible to cheating than a traditional in-class exam.

Each course also contains multiple mastery assignments customized to each course. Those mastery assignments could be lab reports, recorded presentations, and written essays. Mastery assignments are graded by course instructors and also engage students in self and peer evaluation.

Through integration with Peerceptiv’s research-validated technology, each course provides a mix of instructor, self, and peer grading. (E.g., in the U.S. History I course, the five mastery assignments walk the student through the process of researching and writing a formal essay.) The first three assignments are graded by the instructor, but also use detailed evaluation rubrics to give students an objective framework to provide peer feedback to each other. That peer-review process promotes content mastery through reflection and individual ownership of learning. The final two assignments are graded only by the instructor, using structured rubrics for evaluation and feedback.

TEL courses promote content mastery through reflection and individual ownership of learning. That’s why we encourage students to set goals for their learning and apply course concepts to their own individual circumstances. In addition, courses are aligned with 21st-century skills and competencies via TEL Mastery Standards. Course exams and mastery assignments are mapped to individual TEL mastery standards (e.g., Problem Solving, Critical Thinking, Computation, Technology Application, and Self-Management), allowing the students to track their progress on skills needed for the modern working world.

TEL Library course requirements are straightforward and easy to follow. When students have questions, they can contact TEL Support quickly via chat, email, or phone. We respond to student issues within 4 business hours and grade written exams and assignments within 72 hours.

In a nutshell, our Courses-on-Demand are top-quality, yet radically affordable. It’s part of our commitment to making education “good enough for the richest, yet cheap enough for the poorest.”

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Intellectual freedom at Australian universities? Only if your values are ‘aligned’

The university year began with a rumbling noise that all is not well with intellectual freedom in this country. What started as a small story at a Queensland campus has become a very big one that demands attention if we care about the future of the current generation of young Australians, the next generation, and the trajectory of freedom in this country.

Generation Liberty is home to a group of young Australians, part of the Institute of Public Affairs, who are committed to understanding and promoting the way in which freedom has enriched people across the history of civilisation. As a board member and now chairman of the IPA, I have come to know many members.

They are an eclectic bunch mostly under 25. So good luck to those creepy fiends of identity politics who try to filter these young people by sex, sexual orientation, racial and religious traits. This futile search will throw up these common threads only: they are curious contrarians. They engage in furious debates, don’t take themselves too seriously and are willing to listen to others. They want to learn things they haven’t always been taught at school or at university, the history of Western civilisation, warts and all, the ebbs and flows of freedoms and its impact on people.

Last month, Gen Lib, as we call it, applied to have a stall at Market Week, an extended part of O Week at Queensland University of Technology, which runs in late February. By email in late January, Alisha Pritchard from QUT’s student guild declined Gen Lib’s application, telling it the committee had “decided that your brand does not align with our values”.

In the days that followed, Drew Pavlou, a student who sits on the University of Queensland’s senate, started a petition to ban Gen Lib from UQ’s market day activities too. Pavlou describes himself as a human rights campaigner. He has tweeted a video of himself supporting Hong Kong protesters at UQ. Alas, his lack of support for intellectual freedom at home creates a serious credibility problem for him. In other social media posts Pavlou has called for crushing dissent, burning books and said Gen Lib members “need to be bullied into submission.”

What on earth are they afraid of? This year, Gen Lib intends to run a book club for students that will include Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, Albert Camus’s The Stranger, Mark Twain’s The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. Gen Lib also will chat about what we call Big Fat Books, including The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Atlas Shrug­ged by Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan has the authority to direct the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency in the exercise and performance of its powers. Picture: AAP
Which book frightens QUT’s student guild or the student representative on the UQ senate’s peak governing body so much that they don’t want students knowing about Gen Lib?

When news broke of this censorship of Gen Lib, QUT’s student guild ran for the hills, claiming a litany of other reasons for Gen Lib’s exclusion. But remember its first response to Gen Lib: “Your brand does not align with our values.”

At one level, this is a story about a group of students who have not been taught about the empowering forces of intellectual freedom, let alone the history of freedom across a few thousand years of Western civilisation.

But it is part of a much bigger story that includes a vice-chancellor, too. Following questions from this newspaper to the Education Minister, QUT vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil released a statement last week saying that O Week gives priority to guild-affiliated clubs, and Gen Lib could affiliate and apply next year. In any case, “the available area for stalls during O Week is currently at capacity”, she said.

Then came some pure puffery. “QUT does not operate on the basis of left or right-wing bias: the effectiveness of all we do here relies upon remaining open to a variety of contesting viewpoints and to the merits of evidence,” Sheil said.

Was Sheil misinformed about the facts or was she being disingenuous? Either way, the university’s leader failed to address the fact that the student guild at QUT rejected Gen Lib’s application for Market Week, not O Week, and on the basis that its brand did not align with their values.

On Wednesday afternoon, QUT backed away from its first statement. Peter Gatbonton, QUT’s manager of student engagement, emailed an invitation to Gen Lib’s Theodora Pantelich, inviting them to be part of O Week.

What happened to no space? Maybe like a late guest pulling out from a wedding reception the chaps from the Socialist Alternative couldn’t make it after all.

Seriously, are we meant to be grateful that QUT administrators caved in to pressure and managed, after all, to find space for the ideas of freedom at QUT’s O Week?

Perhaps, in her private moments, the vice-chancellor of QUT wonders how the heck it reached this dismal state of affairs among her students. In truth, the responsibility rests with university administrators like her. Rarely from the goodness of their hearts or the brilliance of their minds do VCs defend intellectual freedom. They tend to do it once forced, when exposed, and shamed. Like here.

Vice-chancellors love talking about deliberately ambiguous concepts such as “diversity” and “inclusion” rather than a bedrock principle called intellectual freedom. Worse, they have overseen the cementing of these woolly words on campus to shut down div­erse views and students who challenge the orthodoxy feel excluded.

We know this from a survey of students conducted by the IPA last year. Rather than listening to the public exhortations of VCs, we asked students about their experience at universities. Forty-one per cent of them said they felt unable to express their opinions at university. This is what transforms a small story about a student guild at QUT into a very big story about the strangulation of intellectual freedom. The story gets bigger still. It includes a set of laws that are lame and a regulator that has had no discernible impact on improving intellectual freedom at Australian universities.

Start with the Higher Education Support Act 2003. As a condition of receiving federal money from taxpayers, it provides that “a higher education provider … must have a policy that upholds free intellectual inquiry in relation to learning, teaching, and research”. Then there is the HES Framework 2015 that says: “The higher education provider has a clearly articulated higher education purpose that includes a commitment to and support for free intellectual inquiry in its academic endeavours.” This framework requires a university “governing body … to develop and maintain an institutional environment in which freedom of intellectual inquiry is upheld and protected”.

Now for the regulator. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency is empowered to enforce the HES Act and the HEC Framework so taxpayers and students know publicly funded universities are carrying out their core mission to educate their students.

TEQSA’s own report card is woeful. Like VCs around the country, TEQSA’s chief commissioner, Nick Saunders, has mentioned intellectual freedom, including when asked at a Senate estimates inquiry, but there is scant evidence of a regulator genuinely committed to holding universities to their core mission of intellectual freedom. If this is yet another rogue bureaucracy ignoring its remit from government, the government has a chance to appoint a new kind of bureaucrat. TEQSA chief executive Anthony McClaran is leaving his role at the end of next month. The search for a new boss may be the chance to boost the heft of this body.

But, then again, maybe the law needs reforming. After all, requiring a policy on paper about intellectual freedom is meaningless; what matters is enforcement. This story, then, is also about the federal government. A series of them, in fact. Intellectual freedom has been on the slide for decades, going back to the atrocious treatment of Geoffrey Blainey at the University of Melbourne in 1984 when he aired his view that the Hawke government’s 40 per cent intake of poor immigrants from Asia could threaten the country’s social cohesion unless managed properly. He was hounded off campus as a racist. Blainey is not a racist; he is one of Australia’s finest historians.

There has sometimes been a bit of talk from politicians, prime ministers too, and a bit of legislative tinkering such as Julia Gillard’s changes to the HES Act in 2011. But still, today, too many university campuses are not known as places of learning where intellectual freedom thrives. If they were, a student guild running stalls for new students wouldn’t dream of banning a Gen Lib stall on the basis that its brand did not align with the guild’s values. If intellectual freedom were taken seriously, a vice-chancellor would not put up with this baloney on their campus. And neither would the regulator or our government.

The Education Minister has the authority to direct TEQSA in the exercise and performance of its powers. Isn’t it time then for a ministerial kick up the regulator’s backside? If not now, when? What will it take for that to happen?

Remember, too, that thousands of Australians are still waiting for the Morrison government to support intellectual freedom by supporting Peter Ridd, who was sacked by James Cook University for challenging the quality of climate science.

Instead, Education Minister Dan Tehan has plans to tweak this, and tinker with that, tightening up the government’s “compact” with each publicly funded university to include universities reporting on their approaches to supporting freedom of intellectual inquiry on campus. That’ll fix things, then.

Another more difficult, but not impossible, route to intellectual freedom is to remove sources of public funding from universities that fail at that core mission.

A baker’s mission is to bake. A lawyer gives legal advice. A plumber will fix your plumbing. Yet we need laws, regulators, compacts and codes to convince university administrators their core job is to offer intellectual freedom on campus.

No wonder Generation Liberty is thriving, attracting curious young people hungry for what publicly funded universities fail to offer them. It is a safe bet that, far away from student guilds and VC offices, our values about freedom align very closely with millions of Australians.

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