N.C. Governor Wants to Tie University Support to Jobs, Not Liberal Arts

North Carolina’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, said in a radio interview on Tuesday that he would propose legislation to overhaul how the state supports higher education, to put the emphasis on job creation and not the liberal arts, The Charlotte Observer reported.

In a conversation with William J. Bennett, a former U.S. secretary of education who is now a conservative radio host, Mr. McCrory lamented that “some of the educational elite have taken over our education where we are offering courses that have no chance of getting people jobs.”

Later, commenting on a crack Mr. Bennett made about gender-studies courses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the governor said: “That’s a subsidized course. If you want to take gender studies, that’s fine, go to a private school and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.”

Mr. McCrory’s comments drew a strong reaction from faculty members, who said the governor’s focus on education as job training was misplaced, and from the university system’s president, Thomas W. Ross. The university’s value to the state “should not be measured by jobs filled alone,” Mr. Ross said.