Education is the cornerstone of an informed populace.
However, a creeping ideology is worming its way into university administration practices that could threaten the very basis of education. This ideology, which is gaining an unnerving amount of traction, is that public universities are being regarded as businesses rather than institutions designed to produce well-educated, well-informed and well-thinking individuals.
This distressing dogma has managed to find allies among politicians, voting boards and even the presidents of public universities.
It manifested itself heavily in the May 17 vote by the Utah Board of Regents, which gave dramatic pay raises to all Utah public university presidents (R205). This memorandum gives the presidents of Utah State University and Utah Valley University 14 percent and 24 percent raises respectfully, bringing their salaries to $325,774 and $241,295.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with providing an overworked head administrator with decent compensation, it is the language used to justify this memorandum that is disturbing. Words such as “competitive marketplace” and “market equity” used in reference to a university president’s wage reveal the startling thought that a university ought to be dependent on free market forces.
If a university was enslaved to the free market, it would have to compete with other high-level private sectors for competent administrators.
Further, funding would only go towards departments and fields of study that create revenue for the school — mainly athletics and hard sciences.
The Colleges of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences, which are notorious for providing graduates with underwhelming pay, already have to beg for funding. And with the added pressure of a free market, they would become non-existent at a university.
For example, gender studies is a crucial field that provides the educated public with an understanding of social issues. And philosophy, often accused of providing little in the way of answers or well-paying jobs, provides invaluable critical thinking skills to students who pass through the major.
These essential aspects of a public university and higher education would wither and die for lack of funding to their respective departments in a free market college atmosphere.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people … They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” And, for the sake of liberty, we must maintain all aspects of that education — those that pay and those that don’t.
Prioritizing pay for our university presidents is a surefire way to lose this liberty. It puts a university into the realm of extrinsic financial motivations. A university is a place for education, not business mentalities.
A public university is established and funded by the public for the benefit of the public, and it is most certainly in the public’s best interests to have a socially-informed, well-educated and critically-thinking citizenry.
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