CRT gets all the attention, but this less-sexy part is equally important—if not more so.
As I wrote on Monday in my introduction to Lawless, the crisis in higher-ed is different than the decades-old complaint about the liberal takeover of the academy. Instead, university officials placate, facilitate, and even foment illiberal mobs, with everyone else keeping their heads down to avoid the cancellation crossfire. And that's a story of growing bureaucracies.
In the 25 years ending in 2012, the number of professional university employees who don't teach grew at about twice the rate of students, while tuition at public colleges more than tripled. Those trends have only accelerated, though useful statistics are hard to come by as surveyors change methodologies and the government fails to collect or disclose uniform data.
What all this really means is that students are paying more and more to fund an expanding cohort of well-compensated bureaucrats, without getting anything in return. And this isn't just a budget issue. Administrators are more radical than professors, and not steeped in norms of academic freedom, all of which detracts from the educational environment.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Reason
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Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here. This piece is adapted from Ilya's new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites, available now.
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