Public policy prof questions myth of academia’s “golden age”

It has become common for critics of higher education to hearken back to a “golden age” found in the period immediately following World War Two, writes Christopher P Loss, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Higher Education at Vanderbilt University. While Loss concedes that today’s educators might face challenges with “slashed budgets and political meddling,” he adds that, “when you consider the institutionalized white-male privilege of the GI Bill; or the routine breaches of academic freedom in the name of national security; or the dubious morality of military research; or the violent tendencies of the student antiwar movement; or the baldfaced racism, misogyny, and homophobia that pervaded campuses … the so-called golden age doesn’t look so golden.” Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription Required)