Exactly whose cause is the Free Press championing? USM is but one of many public universities facing budget cuts, tuition hikes, and relentless economic pressure from an increasingly privatized, profit-obsessed world. Making “the tough decisions” about “chronically under-enrolled” programs only expresses the university’s willingness to bow, to prostrate itself before the insatiable free-market machine. Isn’t it time we acknowledge the true enemy of the public university, the architect of our “core financial issues?”
If our education is no longer “practical,” or financially sustainable, are we to simply accept the terms and accede? When will our educational development be “too important to fail”? Our university must be defended from such a system – not adjusted to it, as though we’re eager for its elegant, “streamlined” veneer.
– Gabriel Lane, Political Science Major