WASHINGTON — A new national coalition of college faculty groups has launched grassroots movement challenging “reformers” whom they claim are pursuing policies and strategies that are endangering higher education opportunities for all but the most able to afford it.
The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, spearheaded by the 22,000-member California Faculty Association, plans to challenge budget and education policy makers on a variety of fronts, from the push for performance-based budgeting to elimination of liberal arts courses. An early goal is to promote greater collegiality among academicians themselves, campaign leaders say, as nearly all are in the same economic boat these days.
“This campaign … is about tearing down the walls of isolation among faculty, but, more importantly, bringing together faculty and other groups who are passionate about higher education and are deeply distressed about its current direction,” says Dr. Lillian Taiz, a professor of history at California State University, Los Angeles and president of the California Faculty Association.
Taiz, a veteran college educator, says more and more educators are trying to educate students in “crumbling and toxic circumstances.” She was among a host of educators gathered Tuesday for a news conference at the National Press Club to announce formation of the new campaign.
Nearly two dozen organizations, a mix of education and labor groups representing college educators, were listed as organizers or supporters of the campaign, the end product of a January gathering in Los Angeles of 64 educators from 21 states. They met to explore the impact dramatic budget cuts and so-called education reforms over the past few years that are being increasingly imposed on institutions of higher learning with little input, organizers claim, from students and teachers in the classroom.
Dr. Arnold Mitchem, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Council for Opportunity in Higher Education, says the new organization will be another tool advocacy groups like his can use to voice support for the myriad federal and state programs that aid low-income and underprepared students but now face steady cuts in funding.
To illustrate his point, Mitchem says 43 states have reduced their education budgets by about 40 percent since 2007. Also, he says, the recently passed federal budget bill required the Department of Education to take an $11 billion budget cut. Mitchem, whose organization focuses on federal funding for the TRIO education programs, says 12 percent of the money the Education Department lost “was aimed at low income, minority and handicapped students.
