As Clara Jones prepared to go off to college in the 1930s, her grandfather told her: “You’re going to get your education, and it’s not yours; you’re doing it for your people.” In the early 20th century, young people often pursued educational opportunities with financial support from their local communities, whose members understood that they would all benefit from investing in knowledge and expertise.

This conception of higher education as a shared resource, worthy of broad public support, is much less common today. In recent decades, the percentage of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s (NSHE) operating budget that is funded by state appropriations has declined from 77 percent in 2009 to 59 percent in 2023. In the same period, the share paid by students’ registration fees increased from 14 percent to 29 percent. A hike in student fees approved by the Board of Regents in December last year shifts even more of the burden of funding higher education onto the backs of young Nevadans who can least afford it.

This user pays model has replaced earlier policies that were based on the belief that education is a public good rather than a private benefit to be purchased. In the mid-20th century, an era of unprecedented prosperity for many Americans, the federal and state governments invested heavily in the nation’s public universities.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson noted in 1965, expanding access to higher education was beneficial not just for the students who attended college but for other Americans as well. For individuals, education offered personal fulfillment and professional opportunities. For the nation, it created informed and engaged citizens capable of participating responsibly in their own self-government. Millions of people who never set foot on a college campus benefited from the production of new knowledge, technological innovations and economic growth generated by institutions of higher learning. 

Robust funding for public universities was possible because of the prosperity generated by policies that recognized workers, businesses and government all had a role to play in creating and distributing wealth. Strong labor laws enabled unions to secure living wages for their members and led to improved incomes for nonunionized workers as well. Higher pay for workers meant more demand for consumer goods, allowing businesses to expand and create more jobs. This in turn generated tax revenues that paid for social investments in education, infrastructure and other activities that served everyone.

Things began to shift in the 1970s, when a decade of high unemployment and high inflation sent policy makers scrambling for solutions. Free market proponents who opposed government intervention in the economy gained influence and dominated debates over the economic direction of the nation in the late 20th century. These theorists argued that the forces of supply and demand could deliver services more efficiently than government agencies and bureaucrats, convincing political leaders to cut taxes and reduce spending on public services. 

Anti-tax and anti-government activists redefined taxation as a form of theft instead of a legitimate and necessary mechanism through which people pay for services they all use. Their simplistic mantra (more taxes equals more government equals less freedom) appealed to many voters and made it difficult to enact policies that would ensure adequate funding for government operations. Consequently, public agencies are often short-staffed and lacking the resources they need to properly serve their constituents, which feeds the myth that the government can’t do anything right and privatization is the solution to all our problems. 

For decades now, public universities have been pressured to act more like corporations, delivering a product to consumers for the lowest possible cost. Courses and programs must be marketed and sold to those who have the means to pay for them rather than being developed with broader social goals in mind. College degrees are seen as items to be purchased by and for the benefit of individual students rather than a collective investment that enhances the overall health of the community. University presidents become the equivalent of CEOs, administrators are middle management, professors are employees and students are customers. Declining public support for higher education has forced universities to raise student tuition fees, seek out private donations and grants and borrow money from financial institutions to make up the shortfall in funding. 

All of this undermines the educational mission and makes it hard for universities to continue their historical functions as engines of social mobility and societal well-being. Today’s college graduates, saddled with debt, cannot move as easily into comfortable middle-class lives as generations before them did.

Incoming freshmen feel compelled to choose majors in practical fields that they (mistakenly) think are more likely to lead to employment rather than pursuing degrees in the humanities or social sciences that may align more closely with their actual interests. Administrators cut instructional costs by eliminating full-time, tenure-track positions and hiring more part-time faculty, who are poorly paid and work without job security, benefits or even offices. Greater reliance on private donors and banks undermines academic freedom and gives undue influence to people whose interests lie in propagandizing or profit seeking rather than education.

Academic workers are organizing to fight back against these trends and the detrimental impact they have had. The American Association of University Professors and allied organizations have called for a New Deal for Higher Education that seeks to “recenter our public colleges and universities as a public good” through policies to lower tuition costs, alleviate student debt, end exploitative labor practices, restore institutional funding and ensure access to a college education for all who want it. 

A National Day of Action is planned for April 17 to highlight the centrality of higher education in preserving freedom, democracy and the economic health of the nation. Nevadans can help by contacting their state and federal legislators and asking them to reinvest in this vital public resource by fully funding our region’s colleges and universities. College for all means exactly that: a broadly valued, shared resource that is good for everyone.

Greta de Jong is a UNR Foundation professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. 

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