Joseph McLaughlin

Op-Ed: Tuition protesters won't make headway until they take the movement to Columbus

I am writing to commend and applaud those students who have raised their voices against the escalating costs of tuition in recent days and hope that others quickly join their ranks on campus. I also want to express my shock at the size of the uniformed police presence I witnessed when I walked by the protest at midday on Friday.These Ohio University students are right to object to the increasingly prohibitive costs of a college education and to do what they can locally to question their necessity. It is undoubtedly the case that public universities, and not just Ohio University, behave more and more like corporations than academic communities all the time and that their leaders behave more like CEOs, chasing the dollars of wealthy donors through victories in football and basketball and seeking to boost executive compensation to unprecedented levels, all to the detriment of the core academic mission. On our campuses, we are seeing the same rising levels of inequality that we witness in society at large.While it is crucial for students to continue to pressure our administration to reduce needless expenditures, in the end, doing so is only the tip of the iceberg. The fundamental reason why Ohio University raises tuition annually is because of what has happened over the last twenty years in Columbus. The political right has engaged in a gradual de-investment in public education and other public services that is part of a larger strategy to privatize higher education and transform what was once considered a public good into a consumer good. A college education has been transformed into a credentialing process, viewed by many as fulfilling no purpose beyond increasing the individual’s potential income. When I started teaching at Ohio University almost 19 years ago, fully half of the University’s support came from the state of Ohio, an amount that has plummeted to less than 30 percent today and will likely continue to fall dramatically without a change in Columbus. Meanwhile, the costs of educating students have not gone away. The University has, not surprisingly, passed the cost of this lost public investment onto students and their families. In addition to rising tuition, students now also bear a heavy burden in paying back loans, the interest on which increases the profits of the financial sector (those who profit of this system, not coincidentally, contribute heavily to political campaigns).As The Post reported on Friday (“Students March,” January 23), students are right to identify this as an issue of “class war.” So, if they want to fight back, I’m afraid local protests are only going to be marginally effective at best. Students can only hope to see any real and significant change when they forge connections with students at other public universities, take their march to Columbus, and take their frustration and energy back to their hometowns across Ohio where they need to raise their voices in those local political conversations.Joseph McLaughlin is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio University and the former Chair of Faculty Senate, where he served on the Budget Planning Council.