“Why aren’t the students out protesting what Trump is doing to the universities?” I’ve been getting this question again and again from friends in France, who are astounded that the Trump administration’s assault on higher education has provoked so little in the way of coordinated student action.
Don't structural peculiarities of the American USA explain most of the differences that perplex our French friends? When the government of Québec wanted to raise university tuition, the students went on strike in a way that French observers found very recognizable. In the French and Qc systems, the students had leverage over the government. As you say, our student activists mostly have leverage over university administrations.
Trump doesn't want to reform elite universities or raise their tuition, he wants to cripple them. I can't imagine student activists doing very much about this, except perhaps as part of a national protest movement that mostly isn't lead by students at fancy colleges.
Back in the early years of the Reagan era when I was an undergrad, the shift to seeing higher ed as a lifestyle choice of customers crystallized; before that, just as with K-12 and when the GI Bill became law, the idea was that higher ed was forming better citizens. the shift from student-as-citizen to student-as-customer is a big factor in the low solidarity between university students and university staff (faculty and administrators), imo. I'm glad to have spent my teaching career in France, a country that has valiantly resisted the road to hell (and debt) of the student-as-customer. C. Jon Delogu, Univ Jean Moulin - Lyon 3
Don't structural peculiarities of the American USA explain most of the differences that perplex our French friends? When the government of Québec wanted to raise university tuition, the students went on strike in a way that French observers found very recognizable. In the French and Qc systems, the students had leverage over the government. As you say, our student activists mostly have leverage over university administrations.
Trump doesn't want to reform elite universities or raise their tuition, he wants to cripple them. I can't imagine student activists doing very much about this, except perhaps as part of a national protest movement that mostly isn't lead by students at fancy colleges.
Back in the early years of the Reagan era when I was an undergrad, the shift to seeing higher ed as a lifestyle choice of customers crystallized; before that, just as with K-12 and when the GI Bill became law, the idea was that higher ed was forming better citizens. the shift from student-as-citizen to student-as-customer is a big factor in the low solidarity between university students and university staff (faculty and administrators), imo. I'm glad to have spent my teaching career in France, a country that has valiantly resisted the road to hell (and debt) of the student-as-customer. C. Jon Delogu, Univ Jean Moulin - Lyon 3
Good. But couldn’t the same be said for the professors?
What about tenured professors? What are they doing to protest Trump’s actions?
Excellent.