-Angela
Written by
Richard J.
Reddick, Contributor
The recent results of a Pew Research Center survey
on the public's views of colleges and universities are disheartening. Pew found
that during the past year, Republicans perceiving higher education in a
negative light increased 13 percentage points. Among Republicans, 58 percent
now perceive colleges and universities negatively, while 36 percent viewed them
as positive. Among Democrats, 19 percent see higher education as negative while
72 percent see it as positive.
It's no secret that one likely cause of this change
is the 2016 presidential election and the political climate that followed.
College campuses were, and still are, the sites of protests leading up to and
following the election. This is part of the role that universities have
historically played as sites of social activism, from Edward R. Murrow's leadership
of the National Student Federation of America in the 1930s to the student
protests over Vietnam and civil rights in the 1960s and 1970s.
But what is different now are the ways in which we
understand events taking place on campuses.
In addition to these results, Pew also reported
similarly wide gaps in the perception of the national news media between
Republican/Republican-leaning respondents and those on the other end of the
political spectrum. Americans are accessing other sources such as Facebook,
Twitter and blogs for news, which can radically skew one's perception of what
is actually occurring at the nation's more than 4,000 campuses.
In the 1960s, former University of California
president Clark Kerr introduced the term "multiversity" to describe
higher education, with manifest ideas of knowledge production and
dissemination, for a multitude of constituents. Kerr said, "The university
is so many things to so many people that it must, of necessity, be partially at
war with itself."
Universities, by their nature, are chaotic places,
but one of the few where the purpose is to bring together individuals with
diverse identities and beliefs to engage in a better understanding of the
world. It is tragic to think that a sizable population of Americans views this
opportunity as adverse, or worse nondesirable. And especially at a time when a
larger proportion of historically underrepresented students — students of
color, low-income students, immigrant students and nontraditional adult
students — are comprising the higher education landscape.
Another cause for these results likely relates to
the increasingly high costs of college. Researchers have detailed the 30-year
trend of declining state appropriations to colleges and increasing tuition at
public and private institutions. Coupled with increasing amounts of student
debt and a diminishing number of full-time faculty members, the recipe for
dissatisfaction is a potent one.
More of us need to understand that universities are
learning organizations that are often at the forefront of longstanding social
challenges. There are, at times, missteps in how to engage with one another,
but it often starts with inaccurate or partial information. Civil and
productive discourse is essential to the development of critical thinking, and
hopefully the solutions to problems that bedevil our society will originate
when people engage, debate and analyze different perspectives. But this
opportunity is often thwarted by a mentality that seeks to find "both
sides" of an argument when one side denigrates, obfuscates or demeans the
humanity of the other. All members must cultivate an approach that seeks to
elucidate and educate, rather than insult and intimidate.
Social injustice — such as racism, sexism and
homophobia — persists. But if we cannot summon the courage to engage and
discuss the causes, effects and solutions of these ills, we are fated to
perpetuate them. By their very nature, colleges and universities are not
sites to uncritically absorb dogma or ideology. The marketplace of ideas only
functions with a full understanding of the histories and lived experiences of
all those who inhabit it.
If anything, the results of the Pew survey suggest
that we need greater engagement with ideas across the political
spectrum, with less of the vitriol endemic to the political arena. With so
few institutions that purposefully engage with diverse perspectives and
experience, the role of the university has become more critical than ever.
Richard J. Reddick is the assistant vice president
of research and policy and an associate professor of educational administration
at The University of Texas at Austin. Email: richard.reddick@austin.utexas.edu
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