> Skip to content
FEATURED:
  • Student-Success Resource Center
Sign In
  • News
  • Advice
  • The Review
  • Data
  • Current Issue
  • Virtual Events
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Career Resources
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Career Resources
Sign In
  • News
  • Advice
  • The Review
  • Data
  • Current Issue
  • Virtual Events
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Career Resources
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Career Resources
  • News
  • Advice
  • The Review
  • Data
  • Current Issue
  • Virtual Events
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Career Resources
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Career Resources
Sign In
ADVERTISEMENT
The Review
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Show more sharing options
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Copy Link URLCopied!
  • Print

How Higher Education Became a Pawn in the Partisan Forever War

By  Kevin Carey
July 9, 2019
Hundreds attend a rally on Monday in front of the Alaska Capitol, calling for an override of Gov. Michael Dunleavy’s budget vetoes. The vetoes include a cut that would chop the university system’s state funding by 41 percent.
Michael Penn, Juneau Empire, AP Images
Hundreds attend a rally on Monday in front of the Alaska Capitol, calling for an override of Gov. Michael Dunleavy’s budget vetoes. The vetoes include a cut that would chop the university system’s state funding by 41 percent.

The quakes came in quick succession, first a 6.4 on the Richter scale, rattling nerves and door frames across Southern California, then a 7.1 just 34 hours later, knocking homes off foundations and sending families into the street. Days earlier and 3,000 miles north along the Ring of Fire, Alaska’s governor, Michael Dunleavy, had created a different kind of jolt, no less abrupt and jarring, by announcing a 41-percent cut in state funding to the Alaska public-university system.

Greater Los Angeles is still standing, as is the foundation of state financial support for college nationwide. But politics, like seismology, is an inexact science, full of hidden pressures and unexpected catastrophes. The question is whether Dunleavy’s actions are a foreshock of greater destruction to come.

We're sorry. Something went wrong.

We are unable to fully display the content of this page.

The most likely cause of this is a content blocker on your computer or network.

Please allow access to our site, and then refresh this page. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, or subscribe.

If you continue to experience issues, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com

Hundreds attend a rally on Monday in front of the Alaska Capitol, calling for an override of Gov. Michael Dunleavy’s budget vetoes. The vetoes include a cut that would chop the university system’s state funding by 41 percent.
Michael Penn, Juneau Empire, AP Images
Hundreds attend a rally on Monday in front of the Alaska Capitol, calling for an override of Gov. Michael Dunleavy’s budget vetoes. The vetoes include a cut that would chop the university system’s state funding by 41 percent.

The quakes came in quick succession, first a 6.4 on the Richter scale, rattling nerves and door frames across Southern California, then a 7.1 just 34 hours later, knocking homes off foundations and sending families into the street. Days earlier and 3,000 miles north along the Ring of Fire, Alaska’s governor, Michael Dunleavy, had created a different kind of jolt, no less abrupt and jarring, by announcing a 41-percent cut in state funding to the Alaska public-university system.

Greater Los Angeles is still standing, as is the foundation of state financial support for college nationwide. But politics, like seismology, is an inexact science, full of hidden pressures and unexpected catastrophes. The question is whether Dunleavy’s actions are a foreshock of greater destruction to come.

While conventional wisdom holds that states massively disinvested in higher education after the Great Recession, the national picture 10 years later has become more complex. Overall state funding per student, generously adjusted to account for college labor costs, is still about 10 percent lower than the pre-recession peak. But individual state paths have diverged. California and New York have increased spending on their enormous university systems while states including Maryland and Massachusetts have all but restored recession-era cuts.

ADVERTISEMENT

Others made different choices. Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Alabama all cut funding by 35 percent or more, a club Alaska is poised to join.

What distinguishes these states? Mostly, the political party that governs them. While nearly all states trimmed funding in the initial years after the financial crisis, the largest sustained budget cuts have been inflicted by Republicans.

The recession gave austerity-minded leaders cover: With revenues shrinking, something had to give, and you can’t raise tuition for elementary schools (at least not yet). Then it was just a matter of never getting around to putting the money back.

And that’s what makes the Alaska news so unsettling. If devastating cuts can come in the best of times, or at least far from the worst, then how sustainable can public higher education really be? Dunleavy appears to be acting from pure anti-government animus. There’s a hole in the budget, and he promised not to raise taxes, and Alaskans want their free Permanent Fund money, so, ergo, slash the university to the bone.

In fairness, Alaska is a strange and largely unpopulated place, with fewer residents than the greater Dayton, Ohio, metro area. Sometimes, what happens in Alaska stays there.

ADVERTISEMENT

But the reactions from conservative cheerleaders offer plenty of reasons to see Dunleavy’s cuts as warnings of a future disaster. Frederick Hess, director of education at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote: “Gosh. It’s almost as if higher ed systems dependent on the public purse could face consequences for becoming ideological entities that have unabashedly opted to take sides in today’s culture wars.”

As the American electorate becomes ever-more efficiently divided into ideologically coherent political parties, every major issue of public concern becomes another front in the partisan forever war. State university systems have mostly avoided that fate, held steady by history, tradition, cultural commitments, and a bipartisan faith in the economic value of learning and knowledge production.

Now tectonic political pressures are threatening to overwhelm that consensus, creating a fault line running north to south through the heartland and then east all the way to the sea.

Propaganda outlets like Fox News have turned difficult campus free-speech debates into a nightly drumbeat of manufactured outrage against colleges and universities. Liberal professors are indoctrinating the youth, the true fascists are in the lecture hall, and so on. The anger builds, and soon the academy becomes the enemy and the other.

ADVERTISEMENT

Defunding higher education is economic madness in red states that are already struggling with out-migration. But that’s the problem with partisan hatred — it transcends self-interest. Many of the same leaders are happy to let thousands of their fellow citizens sicken and die for lack of health insurance by refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, even though the federal government would pick up the tab.

College leaders have historically stayed well above the partisan fray, wisely building a broad base of support that can absorb political oscillation. But the parties are now dividing along educational lines. The Alaska crisis suggests that if universities don’t pick sides, the sides will pick them.

Kevin Carey is director of the education-policy program at New America.

A version of this article appeared in the July 19, 2019, issue.
Read other items in this Alaska’s University System Faces Its Fate package.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Finance & OperationsOpinion
Kevin Carey
Kevin Carey directs the education-policy program at New America.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Related Content

  • Budget Ax Looms for a University Facing Historic Cuts
  • U. of Alaska Has 2 Days to Save Itself. What’s the Strategy?
  • This 5-Word Phrase Has Become a Mantra for Slashing College Budgets
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • DEI Commitment Statement
    • Accessibility Statement
    Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • DEI Commitment Statement
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Institutional Subscriptions
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
    Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Institutional Subscriptions
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
    Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2023 The Chronicle of Higher Education
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin