When talking about Rick Scott’s assault on higher education Don Gaetz, a Republican state senator told the St. Petersburg Times: When the No. 1 degree granted is psychology and the No. 2 degree is political science, maybe before we ask $100 million more of taxpayers, we should redeploy what we have. That way we make sure we’re not sending graduates out with degrees that don’t mean much.
I have two degrees and you probably guessed it, they are political science and psychology. I have also been employed for the last 11 plus years and that started a few weeks after I graduated.
Friends, neighbors concerned citizens, our leaders are leading us down a path of ruin. They have no clue about what they are doing.
I don't even know where to start with this. I think I will just say that we in higher ed (FSU for nine years now) have seen the writing on the wall for some time. Hell, our former president (Wetherell) was hired in 2003 b/c some thought (wrongly) that as a former speaker of the FL House, he would be able to keep the political wolves at bay. No such luck. Nearly $90 million cut from our budget in the last four years and talk of abolishing tenure.
ReplyDeleteThis push to turn public research universities with deep roots in liberal arts education into vocational business schools in not new. Yesterday, I met with three students who all had double majors; some kind of humanities or social science major and a business major. I try to tell them that, really, a business degree does not guarantee a job, that the country is full of unemployed people with all kinds of business degrees as well as degrees in the humanities. They and their parents are scared and with the yearly decreases on Bright Futures money coupled with tuition raises over the last few years, they want to feel some security.
So, it is understandable where the anxiety as far as students and their parents comes from; it is manipulative political molding on the part of Scott and Gaetz to create institutions where students are trained to follow directions, not think for themselves.
But as my sisters and I have mused, "someone" has to work at WalMart. Clearly, Scott and Co. feel those people should be the kids whose parents "want" to send their kids to public schools ("want" to b/c, you know, they could have gone to a charter school or something, right??). And if you "choose" to go to FSU or UF, well, you need to get in lockstep for a "job" producing major.
JDinTLH