a href="http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2008/05/by_peter_wood_the_student.html">Peter Wood at Minding the Campus has an article up on student loans and the value of higher education. Here's my response:

Peter Wood imagines that "ideological frills" are the cause of higher tuition and debt. There's no evidence of this at all. Does he imagine that residence hall directors would simply disappear if they didn't have educational programs? I agree on the need for more faculty (especially tenure-track faculty) rather than administrators. But sustainability czars, if there are any, represent a very tiny part of the staffing, and probably are more appreciated by students than most administrators. In truth, students already have the choice for education without frills. It's called community college, and most students tend to avoid it unless finances or geography dictate otherwise.

As for the student loan credit crunch, Wood apparently knows nothing about economics and doesn't wish to change his ignorance by talking to any economists. It is ludicrous to imagine that this is a collective declaration by the markets that a college education is less worthwhile. It has absolutely nothing to do with a sudden change in the market valuation of higher education and everything to do with the larger credit crisis in this country. If everyone has more difficulty getting loans, then it makes perfect sense that students will face more difficulty getting loans. It has nothing to do with perceptions about college.

[Read Wood's reply in the comments section of his article. He's absolutely right about the increase in administrative staff. What he's missing is the cause. Educational activities are a tiny part of the staffing. Instead, the increase comes from areas such as advising (which faculty used to do), and fundraising, as well as the central administration operation.]

Here's some thoughts of mine from an email I sent to a Delaware student who is a liberal but was very critical of ResLife:

There were two types of opposition to the ResLife plans. One came from students and faculty on campus, left and right, who were annoyed by the stupid and obnoxious ResLife administrators, and who wanted to have more involvement in the process.

The second came from national conservative groups who oppose voluntary educational programs about controversial subjects and want to have them reduced or removed from colleges. These groups think colleges are too "politicized" and want to banish political discussions from educational institutions as much as possible.

If you read Adam Kissel's post, "Partial Victory for Freedom of Conscience," this becomes clearer. The "partial" victory is the reforms you helped support. The total victory they want, though, is to have the Board of Trustees ban the program entirely. So when you say, "No one right-wing or left-wing was calling for the purposal to be banned completely," that's not true. FIRE and other national conservative groups want the proposal to be banned completely and ResLife limited to planning apolitical pizza parties.

So that's what I mean when I wrote that they're using you as a pawn. Now, it's possible that you're not a pawn, and you agree with them in part. I worry about your goal that "sustainability to be limited to environmental sustainability." FIRE and others want to use this to say that ResLife shouldn't have any events or information about, say, African American Heritage Month, because that's not related to the environment. I can't understand why ResLife shouldn't be allowed (and encouraged) to develop any voluntary programs they want to.

The issue here is indeed freedom of conscience. And if someone tells ResLife staff that they're not allowed to organize voluntary events deemed too controversial, that violates their freedom of conscience and the freedom of conscience of students who might want to participate in those activities.

I'm a big supporter of freedom of conscience, and I expect the ResLife will be closely monitored to make sure they don't violate it.

I would suggest one more reform that's needed. I think there should be a clear statement that any students in the dorms, and any faculty and staff, are invited to organize voluntary educational programs in the dorms, and guidelines for how to allow that to happen. I think this would do a lot more to protect freedom of conscience than any attempts to limit activities organized by ResLife.

I hope that you'll ask the Board of Trustees to support the revised proposal, and not to give in to right-wing groups who seek to ban staff from organizing events disliked by conservatives.

Yesterday, the University of Delaware Faculty Senate passed the ResLife proposal 45-7, rightly resisting the calls for censorship from external groups.

I do worry that the plan has been dumbed down by the attacks, and that staffers and students may be afraid to express controversial ideas or create additional activities, on the grounds that nothing that deviates from this plan has been approved. I also wish that the proposal included a provision encouraging faculty, staff, and students to organize additional programs and providing them with an easy mechanism for doing this in the residence halls.

I want to draw attention to a comment by Sherman Dorn about a previous post. Dorn is making a common misconception about academic freedom, namely that it's something owned by the faculty and doled out in small doses to others, rather than a guiding principle of higher education that belongs to everyone.

Peter Wood and Dorn both make a false analogy to academic programs. Faculty should have control over the curriculum, because that involves college credit, grading, and the use of compulsion. Faculty should have no veto power over the extracurriculum, which does not involve compulsion, credit, or grading. It is absurd to imagine that faculty should be able to control all "intellectual" activities on campus even when they're strictly optional.

However, if a faculty committee did say that a program could not be approved because of the political ideology advocated or speculative fears of indoctrination (as conservatives urge in this case), then it would be violating normal academic freedom standards.

Faculty do have a role to play here, and they've played it. The faculty student life committee was directly involved in giving advice to the ResLife proposal. There's a big difference between faculty shared governance and faculty veto power. (To use Dorn's example, that would be like having the Faculty Senate vote on overruling admissions decisions made with faculty input.) There should have never been a collective Faculty Senate vote on approving this program, just the formal (and informal) process of faculty providing their individual views.