By James Wilson
Most of the concern – okay, outrage – from conservatives like me over American universities references indoctrination, the poverty of useful information on American History, similar poverty per logic and rational argumentation, and hypocritical assaults on free speech. Melissa Click comes to mind as example of a professor calling for violence against students daring to film a public demonstration in the University of Missouri; bullies love darkness. Less grabby of headlines is the spiraling cost of university education. But there may be a way to resolve both issues and save a ton of money for taxpayers.
Needed are twin referenda on tenure and collective bargaining in many of our states. Repeal of these laws enables authentic accountability for university faculty – especially if language is included holding administrators just as accountable for their behavior as are their professors. Any college administrator can tell us more than eighty per cent of his budget goes for salaries. When costs rise without a corresponding rise in the value of what is produced – academic excellence or even adequacy – taxpayers are left between rising taxes and creative financing. Neither the rock nor the hard place are sustainable.
Public employee unions can now hold society hostage because there is no market force against which they must contend and be measured. This is why even a dedicated progressive like Franklin Roosevelt was dead set against unions for government employees. If employees cannot be fired – for all practical purposes – nor laid off nor have their income reduced due to lack of appeal to the market there is neither pressure nor competition in their world. They have only to keep escalating their demands – threatening to strike if demands are not met – and they have the taxpayers by the throat/threat of a shutdown. A Ronald Reagan style resolution to the air traffic controllers strike of the eighties is un-doable.
Actually tenure was instituted for very good reasons and I praised God for it when I was teaching in public schools; the same goes for collective bargaining, although I feared it and history justifies my fears. Pre tenure administrators had the power of life and death over faculty. Their aim was to protect the status quo. Teachers who made waves while doing their job to educate were a liability to be contained or cut loose. Salaries were dirt low and raising a family on them was not really in the cards. Tenure provided job protection once a teacher had proven his worth and the advent of unions meant a living wage and more protection. But when Professor Melissa Click can demand violence against a student exercising his rights and universities have become places where books are effectively burned instead of debated the pendulum has swung too far. What is needed is effective accountability with legitimate protection.
Professors should be required to demonstrate their worth in teaching acumen and their pay rises accordingly. If such demonstrations are not forthcoming they can hold until they do demonstrate advancing worth. On the other hand, faculty who encourage and protect free speech and free exercise of faith – especially when they disagree with the expression – should be protected. Faculty who act to suppress freedom should be collecting unemployment. This of course requires an accountability initiative on the ballot, one carefully written to avoid trading one evil for another. In the meantime administrations can bargain new contracts with employee groups based on mutual risks and anticipated gains because the university would be required to pay its own way.
For Christians the matter is self evident. Martin Luther King’s favorite Bible verse was Amos 5:24; the prophet cites God calling for justice to roll like a mighty river. God is speaking across the board. Jesus confronts Pharisees about their obsession with tithing such things as herbs while ignoring the weightier matters of the law like justice and mercy. He says, in effect, “Yeah, I want your gratitude in the form of ten per cent returns, but I want it more in terms of the way you treat others as I treat you.”
The bottom line is universities are too expensive; our culture can no longer sustain their cost; adjustments must be made. The human cost of the suppression of honest dissent is higher; our culture never could sustain the cost; we are on life support in part because of it. The good news is – if the body politic and the Body of Christ will merge interests and shoulder the burden of responsibility for a healthy culture – we will see what He meant when Jesus said (John 14:12) we would do greater things in Him than we had seen even Himself perform.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
