How to win the campus free-speech wars

Why we shouldn't look to governments to solve the censorship crisis.

I became a university lecturer almost 50 years ago, in 1974. At that time in British higher education, there were occasional attempts to shut down discussion and limit freedom of speech. But the vast majority of academics and students were relatively open-minded, and serious clashes of views were a regular feature of campus life.

In the decades since, I have witnessed a significant change. Universities have become increasingly intolerant, and academics and students no longer think free speech is a big deal. Incredibly, the cultural climate that prevails within British higher education is now far less tolerant than in the world outside.

In recent weeks, we have seen the No Platforming of Selina Todd, an Oxford University professor who was prevented from speaking at an event at the Oxford International Women’s Festival because of her views on transgender issues. And former home secretary Amber Rudd was disinvited from an Oxford University student-society event, following pressure from other student groups over her links to the Windrush scandal.

As such brazen displays of intolerance have become more widespread, parliamentarians have begun to discuss the possibility of introducing a law, or new procedures, to strengthen the right to free speech in universities. It has been reported that the government is considering bringing forward an 11-clause bill, drafted within the Department for Education, that would make good on the Tory party’s 2019 manifesto pledge to ‘strengthen academic freedom and free speech in universities’.

This is not the first time that a Conservative government has raised concerns about the fragile state of free speech in universities. Back in 2017, the then universities minister, Jo Johnson, insisted that universities must ‘pledge’ to protect free speech or face being fined or even deregistered by the newly created Office for Students (OfS). He wanted to make the protection of free speech a statutory duty, and a condition of registration with the OfS. The aim of this policy was to hold university authorities to account for the illiberal behaviour of students’ unions.

But so far, no new legislation requiring universities to protect freedom of speech has been passed. Moreover, there is no clear evidence it would make any difference even if new laws were passed. The 1986 Education Act, enacted after several Tory politicians were No Platformed during the early 1980s, already requires universities to uphold freedom of speech. And yet, ever since, we have seen a rise in campus intolerance, not a decline.

I am not surprised by the failure of the law to uphold free speech in universities. No government can enforce freedom if a substantial number of people are against it.

There is no administrative solution to the problem of free speech

The enactment of new laws is an inappropriate and clumsy way of challenging illiberal practices on campuses. Illiberalism and intolerance are deeply entrenched in academic culture. Indeed, the problem begins early, when schoolchildren are told that there are some things they can’t say. By the time young people arrive at university, they have already learned that speech acts that offend ought to be shut down, and perpetrators of offence are legitimate targets of censorship.

Unless children are fortunate enough to encounter a non-conforming teacher, willing to challenge the culture of offence and the politicisation of identity, they will have heard very little about the moral and intellectual significance of freedom. Typically, a cohort of new undergraduates arrives on campus with a meagre understanding of what freedom means in practice, and an ignorance of why the pursuit of the truth depends on a willingness to be exposed to challenging, and even disturbing, ideas.

Campus culture today regards free speech and academic freedom with suspicion. Many student activists, and quite a few academics, assert that only those on the right are interested in free speech. They then dismiss talk of a free-speech crisis on campus as the paranoid fantasy of old, white, heterosexual men.

As it happens, active supporters of intolerance are still a minority within the campus community. The problem is that instead of challenging this minority, most academics and students prefer an easy life. So they are reluctant to challenge the identity entrepreneurs who see offence and bigotry everywhere and who call for language to be policed. Instead, students and academics often self-censor so as to avoid being hassled by the intolerant minority. It means that the culture war now being waged on campuses by identitarians, rarely meets with serious resistance.

Relying on the law to alter the political climate on campuses is a folly. Free speech cannot be enforced by government decree without ceasing to be, well, free. People have to be convinced of the importance of free speech through a battle of ideas. Laws don’t convince. They coerce.

This battle of ideas, this battle for hearts and minds, can only be conducted effectively from within education. It will be a long, protracted battle, which will necessarily begin at school.

How can an enlightened government help?

If a government is genuinely interested in protecting the culture of freedom within and without academia, there are four practical steps it can take.

First, it can desist from promoting the politicisation of identity and the policing of speech. Recent UK governments, Labour and Tory alike, have encouraged the policing of speech by expanding the meaning of hate crime. They have also promoted identity politics – especially the agenda of trans activists – and have acquiesced to its censorious claims. Government needs to remove laws and procedures that criminalise speech, except in circumstances where words are clearly used to incite acts of violence.

Second, students’ union membership should be made an entirely voluntary act. Students’ unions, like any voluntary organisations, should be funded by their members, not publicly subsidised. Such steps would make students’ unions more accountable, and would reduce the resources available for the promotion of anti-democratic activities.

Third, university students and academics should have recourse to legal assistance if they face politically motivated charges, bans and other forms of administrative punishment for their behaviour. Experience shows that if victims of intolerance rely on internal university procedures, they are far less likely to receive justice than if they were able to appeal to due process.

Fourth, the government should examine increasing funding to higher education with a view to encouraging the establishment of new institutions that are genuinely committed to democratic humanist values and which take freedom seriously. As an initial step, policymakers should encourage the establishment of new institutions designed to train teachers. In this way, countering the influence of illiberal pedagogy could have an important influence on the outlook of a new generation of teachers.

These four proposals are designed to change campus culture for the better. Not through government diktat, but through the provision of resources and support for individuals prepared to challenge the forces of intolerance and illiberalism within British universities.

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Cost of a Western Pa. college has increased 35% over the past decade

Career and guidance counselors have shifted the way they prepare students for college as the cost of attending area colleges and universities continues to climb.

Instead of encouraging students to choose a school and field of study where they could explore and find themselves, the focus is now on earning a practical degree — one that would justify the debilitating price tag.

The cost of education at 24 institutions in the region — public and private — has increased by an average of 35% in the past 10 years, according to data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a survey repository within the U.S. Department of Education.

Nationally, costs have risen about 25% at private colleges and 30% at public colleges, according to data from the College Board.

The data combines tuition, room and board, books and fees.

Over the years, Karen Litzinger, a career counselor in Pittsburgh, has grown used to advising prospective college students to consider their potential debt and return on investment for their field of study.

“These people are so young. They’re not necessarily thinking and running the numbers to do basically a cost-benefit analysis,” Litzinger said.

But such calculations have to be commonplace today. Litzinger said there has been a “societal shift.” People used to go to college to explore and get to know themselves. Now, she said, the “college experience” is hardly a factor, and that frustrates her.

“It would be sad to not have the college experience be more than simply getting your degree to get a good job with good pay,” Litzinger said. “To function as a society, we need to be our best selves, and that requires learning about ourselves and teamwork and a little something more than your actual discipline.”

Natalie Momplaisir, director of the local counseling organization College Grad Career Counseling, agreed that education is viewed differently now that the country is saddled with trillions of dollars in student debt — more than $68 billion in Pennsylvania alone.

“People are just going in, getting their degree and getting out so they can get a job,” Momplaisir said. “And there’s so much confusion for students, too, about if college is even worth it.”

Momplaisir said that while she and other counselors used to encourage students to take advantage of financial aid wherever they could, they’re now suggesting students find more grant funding, dip into their savings more and compromise with less-expensive state schools.

“You might have a degree from an awesome school, but you are buried in debt and only making $30,000,” she said.

Every school in Western Pennsylvania has experienced increased costs in recent years — most by around 30%. The University of Pittsburgh campuses increased the least with costs rising only 24% from 2009-19.

The institution that saw the greatest cost jump in the past decade was Clarion University of Pennsylvania, which climbed from $18,210 for in-state students in 2009 to $27,975 in 2019 — an increase of 54%.

Pam Gent, Clarion’s provost, said the increase is due to renovations in the university’s lowest-priced residence halls. But Clarion, like other schools in the state system, also is struggling with dwindling state funds, she said. Gent said that in the 1990s, the state supplemented about 55% of Clarion’s tuition cost. Now, it covers about 27%.

“The biggest change in cost for us is the fact that the state has not made the appropriations that they used to,” Gent said.

In an attempt to ease students’ financial burden, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education implemented a tuition freeze last year, and Clarion also implemented a freeze to housing costs.

Carnegie Mellon University approved a 3.2% undergraduate tuition increase last month, further driving up the cost of one of the most expensive universities in the area and nation. Even without the increase, CMU was the fifth most expensive institution in Pennsylvania and within the top 50 in the U.S., according to U.S. Department of Education data.

In the past 10 years, CMU’s cost of attendance has increased from $54,160 in 2009 to $72,283 in 2018. According to a message to students from Provost James Garrett Jr., tuition will be $57,560 with another $9,210 for room and board and $6,340 for a traditional first-year meal plan. In total, the cost of attending CMU will soon be more than $73,000.

Nationally, much of the increase in college costs is due to inflating operating costs for resources like salaries, utilities, supplies and materials, according to industry tools like the Commonfund Higher Education Price Index, which tracks cost drivers in higher education. Inflation for U.S. colleges and universities rose 2.5% in the 2019 fiscal year.

Litzinger said another possible reason for the increase is a shrinking population of college-going students. In the fall 2019 semester, overall college enrollment in the U.S. declined by more than 231,000 students from 2018, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Data Center.

SOURCE 





Australia: Private schools cost taxpayers almost as much as public ones, report says

Different figures could no doubt have been produced by other researchers but that is not the main issue.  Choice is the issue.  Private schools give parents some choice of what sort of schooling they want for their kids.  They should be entitled to that. It's an important liberty.

Such schooling clearly saves the government on capital costs.  Governments don't build private schools. The school arrives at no cost to the taxpayer. State school building is a significant budget item for State governments.

How much it saves on running costs is only an issue for authoritarian Leftists who use the issue in an attempt to force all kids into one government-controlled mould:  Very Soviet


Governments would have been financially better off if all new enrolments since 2011 had gone to public schools, according to new research which questions the view that private schools lead to big taxpayer savings.

The paper debunks the oft-repeated claim that private schools save the public purse up to $8 billion a year, and argues the true figure is closer to $1 billion, and potentially less.

The School Money-go-round, by researcher and former principal Chris Bonnor and Sydney University academic Rachel Wilson, found the per-student taxpayer spend in some brackets of disadvantage is less at public than private schools.

"Since 2011, in fact, governments would have come out ahead [in terms of recurrent funding] if all new school enrolments had gone to public schools," Mr Bonnor said.
A new report says private schools save governments far less than most people think

A new report says private schools save governments far less than most people think Credit:Louie Douvis

The authors said the findings should lead to a national discussion over restructuring school funding, and prompt governments to make the non-government sector abide by the same rules as public schools. "They have no obligations to serve a wide variety of students," said Mr Bonnor.

Since the Gonski reforms, funding increases to private schools have outstripped those to public schools because the federal government, which provides most public funding to private schools, has met its targets faster than the states. States have a bigger cost because they are the majority funders of state schools, and there are two public schools for each private school.

By 2017 differences in per-student funding had narrowed to $13,300 in the public system, $11,500 for Catholic school students and $9600 in the independent sector on average, according to the most recent data from the My School website.

But the researchers argued those figures masked the fact that students in the public system were the most expensive to educate, because they had higher numbers of disadvantaged, Indigenous and disabled students.

When the authors - who also included the former principal of St Paul's Grammar, academic Paul Kidson - compared per-student spending on schools with similar students, the gap became much narrower.

Among disadvantaged schools, the median amount of per-student taxpayer money spent on Catholic students was highest at $14,350, followed by $13,850 in the independent sector and $13,450 in the government system.

When the researchers calculated the cost of funding all students at the same per-student cost of government students across all bands of disadvantage, they found the cost would be between $800 million and $1.1 billion.

"Advocates for school systems need to keep up to date with the changing financial situation," Mr Bonnor said. "Because non government schools charge fees, they are de facto selective schools on a socio-educational basis. In equivalent countries overseas, that doesn't happen."

Dr Wilson said there was increasing evidence that segregation eroded the quality of school systems. "Now is the time for a full, national discussion on this," she said. "There's a creeping awareness that across education we need some really bold reform.

"And these school funding arrangements would have to be central to how that would occur."

The chief executive of the Association of Independent Schools NSW, Geoff Newcombe, said one in three students attended private schools, and parents paid a third of the recurrent cost and 90 per cent of building costs.

"It is clear parents enrolling their children in non-government schools save taxpayers billions of dollars each year in recurrent and capital funding," he said. "Savings estimates will vary based on methodology.

Non-government schools are already required by governments to meet significant compliance obligations as part of their registration requirements. We welcome transparency and accountability."

A spokeswoman for the National Catholic Education Committee, said 2017 figures showed the Catholic system saved taxpayers $2.3 billion in savings from the amount deducted from the base level of government funding.

They also saved $1.3 billion in building costs. "Catholic schools funded 89 per cent of capital works with state and federal governments contributing only $152 million combined," she said. Private and public schools had different reporting requirements because they were different entities.

Peter Goss, the head of the school education program at the Grattan Institute, described the report as important, and said while the non-government sector would quibble over details, the central argument of the report was correct.

"Non-government schools no longer save taxpayers much at all," he said. "The sad reality is that unfairness is now baked into our school funding model.

"While Gonski 2.0 in 2017 was a big step forward, several policy decisions since then have taken us backwards. And we can’t even console ourselves by saying that we pay less tax because of it.”

SOURCE