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Ryan LaRochelle is a senior lecturer at the Cohen Institute for Leadership and Public Service at the University of Maine. He is a member of the Maine chapter of the national Scholars Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of the University of Maine or the Scholars Strategy Network.
On Sep. 17, University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy announced that staff layoffs and faculty retrenchments will be necessary to address the university’s structural budget deficit. While UMaine faces unique challenges, this is a difficult period for most institutions of higher education.
As colleges and universities navigate this moment, they face scrutiny and outright assault. The Trump administration has made it difficult for international students — who typically pay higher tuition and fees than in-state or domestic students — to enter and stay in the country. Massive cuts to federal grant programs that fund universities’ labs, innovation facilities, graduate student and faculty research costs have left colleges scrambling to fill budgetary gaps.
Conservative activist Christopher Rufo has urged state and federal policymakers to place financial pressure on colleges and universities to put them into a state of “existential terror,” These new federal changes come amidst a decades-long reduction in state-level funding for public universities.
Many of those waging war on higher education argue colleges and universities have drifted from what they believe is their core purpose — providing students with employable skills and preparing them for future careers. It’s understandable that as college costs rise, students and parents worry about whether a degree will pay off. But career preparation has never been the central purpose of higher education.
Post-secondary education has always been about creating an educated citizenry to benefit individuals and the nation as a whole. Emerging from the American Revolution, the framers believed that education was necessary for a nation established on the principle of self-government. In his farewell address, President George Washington proclaimed that the nation should “Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.”
In his first campaign for public office in 1832, Abraham Lincoln highlighted the importance of providing opportunities for the American people to learn. He declared, “Upon the subject of education … I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance.”
As the nation modernized in the middle of the twentieth century, the federal government led the way in promoting the benefits of higher education. Programs like the GI Bill and the Higher Education Act of 1965 sought to make higher education more accessible, so that every American, not only the rich, could benefit from additional learning. In so doing, individuals and the nation would prosper.
Upon signing the Higher Education Act of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, “For the individual, education is the path to achievement and fulfillment; for the Nation, it is a path to a society that is not only free but civilized; and for the world, it is the path to peace—for it is education that places reason over force.” During this period of federal commitment to higher education, the nation saw widespread prosperity, largely fueled by scientific, artistic, cultural, economic, and technological innovation that was driven by America’s colleges and universities.
I can’t help but think about why my parents pushed me to go to college 20 years ago. I was the youngest of four, and neither my parents nor my siblings went to college. My father worked in commercial concrete production making pre-formed materials for bridges and parking garages. My mom worked in a school as a paraprofessional with children with behavioral difficulties. She started community college, but left when she got pregnant with my oldest sister and never returned. They wanted me to pursue a degree not just so that I could get a job, but so that I could experience things they never had a chance to experience, so that I would see the world in new ways, and expand my horizons beyond the zip code where all of my family members had spent their entire lives.
As colleges and universities navigate this moment, we must recognize and defend the point that higher education is about more than job training. It’s about providing opportunities for citizens to broaden their perspectives, develop critical thinking skills, encounter challenging ideas, and become engaged citizens. This is important now more than ever.