In addition to his segment on Obama's Vietnam this Friday, Bill Moyers also focused on funding for public education with Vartan Gregorian. The situation with public education is virtually identical with that of public infrastructure-30 years of underfunding and neglect, thanks largely to the movement conservative "tax revolt." In fact, the two are really one and the same, since an educated public is the human infrastructure on which our country is built. And conservatives don't give a damn about any of it.
BILL MOYERS: All across the country it's the same. State governments are staring down the barrel at $300 billion worth of deficits for the next two years. Twenty-six states already have either cut their budgets for higher education, raised tuition fees, or done both. When it comes to college affordability, this report from The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gives a failing grade of "F" to 49 of the 50 states. Tuition at public four-year colleges is up an average of more than $6,500, at two-year schools, almost $2,500. Yet even with the increases, THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION reports that many college buildings are outdated, inefficient, even crumbling. So what's to be done? Some took hope when President Obama spoke up for higher education in his inaugural address.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.
BILL MOYERS: If the colleges and universities do wind up big winners in Washington, no one will be happier than this man, or more responsible. Long a dynamo for the cause of public education, Vartan Gregorian bears testament to the value of a lifetime of learning.... Last October, Gregorian convened a group of educators to urge whoever would become our next president to invest in higher education. Their meeting later resulted in this two-page newspaper ad, an open letter to then President-elect Obama asking that whatever economic stimulus package comes out of Washington, five percent of it - around 40 to 45 billion dollars - go to higher public education.
Considering that the Treasury and the Fed combined have already given trillions to the financial sector, $40-50 billion to higher public education is less than a pittance. It's an insult, really. But it's what they're asking for.
First off, Gregorian does an excellent job of putting things in perspective:
BILL MOYERS: Your ad claims, "Today, only the federal government has the resources and vision to meet these threats to education." But the fact is that everybody, and I mean everybody, has both hands out, hoping that Barack Obama's stimulus spending will fill those hands. I mean, the highway industry, the automobile industry-
VARTAN GREGORIAN: Everybody.
BILL MOYERS: -the steel industry. I mean, are people like you living metaphorically in an ivory tower? Why should education be privileged when all these other priorities are pressing against the window?
VARTAN GREGORIAN: That's an excellent question. I don't have a complete answer, but I can tell you this one: Adam Smith will roll in his grave to see that capitalism says, "When I make money, it's mine; when I lose money, you have to rescue me." Right? Businesses. Business, when it becomes very big for the country, the country cannot afford for them to collapse. And that's what has happened. All the mergers that happened have come to roost now. We're too big. We may be inefficient, but we'd like you to rescue.
Education is different because you're investing human resources that are necessary to change a society, a system. Even retraining some of these people who are let go, is through education. Education is very central to our democracy. You can neglect it, you can get it on the cheap, and you get what you pay for. And if you think education is costly, try ignorance, because that will be far more costly.
Gregorian goes on to remind us that Lincoln and Roosevelt both invested in higher education in the midst of very costly and very threatening wars:
BILL MOYERS: But this country's lost two million jobs in the last year.
VARTAN GREGORIAN: Yes.
BILL MOYERS: There are millions of families out there losing their homes to foreclosure. And you're asking them to be taxed more or to print more money to support higher education, which may prove too expensive for their kids when they get there?
VARTAN GREGORIAN: Maybe. Maybe. But as an immigrant I have a different view of America. I see America in perspective. As a historian, I see the depth of it as well. And there are great moments in American history. Since President Obama is fond of Abraham Lincoln, so I'll start with Abraham Lincoln. In the middle of the Civil War, worst tragedy that happened to America, Abraham Lincoln signed Morrill Act, established land grant universities. Imagine now any president doing that in the middle of all the calamities we have, Afghanistan, Iraq, economy, and Iran and the Middle East, somebody spending that much effort on - because he wanted to see the future of America.
In the middle of Civil War, Lincoln established a National Academy of Sciences, 1863, because he wanted to see the future of America. In the middle of Civil War he established a commission to study the merits of metric system for America. Because he wanted to see not one year, one to four year; he wanted to see 20, 30, 40 years. Second thing that happened in the middle of the war. World War II, '44, Japan is still fighting, Germany's still fighting, Roosevelt established Servicemen's Act, which later became GI Bill, to see what will happen if ten to eleven million soldiers return without jobs. Would it unleash a new major depression? What? Came up with this brilliant idea to give them opportunity to be educated.
BILL MOYERS: My brother went to college after coming out of the Navy on the GI Bill and so did millions of others.
VARTAN GREGORIAN: Millions of others. Brilliant. In the middle of the war, 1945, '46, Roosevelt established Vannevar Bush commission for future of science in America, which then Truman adopted. It said science should not be based in institutions like European and Soviet, you know, these institutes. It should be based in universities. Then we have, of course, Senator Pell who just died-
BILL MOYERS: Claiborne Pell from Rhode Island, who established the Pell Grants-
VARTAN GREGORIAN: Pell Grants. Greatest democratization of process of access to higher education in our country's history. So we made many strides in the middle of adversity.
Gregorian also got down to the level of nuts and bolts, addressing the issue of eroding quality due to eroding support, happening continuously over a period of decades with little public notice:
BILL MOYERS: And yet you say in this ad, America's losing ground on a number of these very fronts.
VARTAN GREGORIAN: Number of it, because we see education as an expenditure rather than as investment. And let me just give you a couple of reasons why. My fundamental problem has been with public institutions that somehow they have come to accept the fact that democracy and excellence, public sector and excellence are not mutually compatible, that public excellence belongs to the private domain. And all my career I have fought against that concept. Whether it's New York Public Library, whether it's railway stations, whatever it is, these are monuments built in honor of democracy, 19th century, these institutions. And so one of the main things that I worry about public higher education: What is going to happen to public higher education? States' support is dwindling. Yet public has the impression that the land grant universities are providing free education to the public. That's not the case. So public higher education, most of them, cannot compete with private universities in the United States or abroad. I was worried that great universities like Michigan, University of California, University of Texas, and so on, put them in the disadvantage.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
VARTAN GREGORIAN: I think all of them are on the defensive because public expects them to accommodate them; at the same time, states see as a cost. And then they're subjected to deferred maintenance, which in my book means planned neglect. And for twenty years these have been neglected.
University of California has one of the great universities in the world. Still has in many units. University of Texas has, Penn State, Michigan, Indiana. But lack of support is going to bring them gradually to be not excellent.
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?
VARTAN GREGORIAN:America's greatness in higher education has been its diversity and its private-public arrangement. And if we force everybody to go to private domain, then tuitions will definitely increase. Some of them will collapse.
It pains me to see all of these great universities struggling to keep their reputation. And, ironically, even though I have two sons who are journalists, one of them sports writer - if a football team loses in one of these state universities, for two or three years it affects also their funding in the legislature, which is crazy.
BILL MOYERS: Guarantee a winning football team.
VARTAN GREGORIAN: It's crazy. It does not make sense.
Talk about the tail wagging the dog!
Conservatives are right about one thing: Western civilization is in danger. America's greatness is in danger. The only problem is, they are the ones responsible for the danger. They are the subversive other they have always been terrified of.
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