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mini-thread: If anyone is curious about the actual aims of @campusreform, @FoxNews, and other right-wing outrage outlets that gin up stories about "radical professors" (as if nobody else on Twitter noticed Pence's bleeding demon eyes), here is their goal in a nutshell 1/
As I mentioned in my thread schooling the "journalists" who are the willing tools of this propaganda machine, there has been a concerted and well-funded effort on the far right to delegitimize and defund higher education. All of us who study higher ed know this. But why?
Well, for precisely this: to convince the 70+/- % of Americans over 25 who do not themselves have a college education that a college education is worthless. This accomplishes a few things. 1) It assures that the majority of the electorate will not take classes that teach them...
...how to evaluate competing claims, how to interpret evidence, how to express their ideas clearly in speech and writing. An undereducated electorate is a manipulable electorate. 2) It assures that the children of the undereducated will not be able to enjoy...
...the higher earning power of those with a college degree. Lifetime earnings for those with a BA in ANYTHING far outstrip lifetime earnings for those without it. So, the dark money donors funding this propaganda keep the working poor in their place...
3) delegitimizing higher education is a rightwing aim that picked up steam (and money) PRECISELY when Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous and immigrant students were enrolling in American universities in larger and larger numbers...
When only white people benefited from public spending on higher ed, state legislatures were happy enough to maintain well-funded public colleges and universities with well-paid permanent faculty members. Once "minorities" started benefiting from that public spending,...
the rightwing propagandists began doubling down on efforts undermine higher education as a public good. They've been doing this for decades. The buzzwords change, but the aim is the same: stop public expenditure on education that benefits all, so that only some can afford it....
4) and the last part of the puzzle, which people who have read @tressiemcphd's lower ed know well: PRIVATIZE what was formerly a public good in order to profit from students' need for credentials in a post-industrial economy. Make public colleges more expensive,...
...promise fast access to credentials required for good paying jobs via private for-profit "colleges" and programs, and the shareholders in those ventures can enrich themselves when disadvantaged/first-generation college-aspirant students choose what sounds like a sure thing...
So, if you're wondering why @campusreform, @foxnews push this tripe, why reporters like @mn_turn and @KincaidBest are paid to push this tripe, that's why. It's not about the purported dangers posed by college professors who have opinions. It's making people believe...
...that professors and college in general is a dangerous place for young minds. Defunding higher ed has been going on for 50 years, and it will keep going until only very elite colleges are left for the most financially elite. That's the goal of this propaganda.
cc @collincollege
cc @collincollege
