Hah, I thought it would be funny to add that "left as an exercise to the reader" bit, a habit from my Math days.
Two things.
First, reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer college level skills. That combined with computers means that the bar for government clerical work is much, much lower. The result is that in the 1920s a Philosophy grad would be extremely useful to a county government because of their general liberal arts education, nowadays a high school diploma does the trick. Doubly so now that everyone can use a computer to some degree or another. Without the critical function of providing clerks, Universities have lost a large amount of their value proposition to the government.
Second, since the 1970s both political parties have shifted away from the government as all of us striving together, to a necessary evil at best. The right has been extremely effective at villifying government action and government spending in particular. With that context in mind, it is not surprising that the right would aim to not only cut government spending on higher education (something that their religious wing also likes) to save on the tax money, but also to "starve the beast" in general.
Also, the 1970s were kinda crazy, and academia came out of that looking kinda extreme.
Your last and second-to-last paragraphs aren't entirely congruous are they?
Firstly you argue that "the right" is responsible for villifying government action, i.e. the population at large were basically static in their views until "the right" came along.
But then you say that the same era was kinda crazy and academics in particular (absolutely not a bastion of the right) came out looking extreme.
I'm not sure where you're based in the world, but that description seems accurate for the UK, perhaps the USA but my knowledge of 1970s era America is not so hot.
Rather than "the right" winning some sort of struggle, perhaps the population came to be suspicious of government naturally as a result of observing the craziness of those times. After all it would be strange if times could be crazy and government employees (as all academics are) could look kinda extreme, and that not affect people's views on a large scale.
I should’ve specified, I live in America. I also did not live to see the 1970s in person, so my final paragraph should be taken with more salt than the preceding ones.
> Firstly you argue that "the right" is responsible for villifying government action, i.e. the population at large were basically static in their views until "the right" came along.
To be fair, “the right” is a fairly large section of the population. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that in general Americans are much more skeptical of the utility of government than they were 50 years ago.
I think your last paragraph is plausible, but it’s not my favored explanation.
For me, I think the decline in public opinion towards government programs started with racial integration. Around that time a surprisingly large chunk of white people appear to have willingly degraded their public institutions to avoid having to share with black people, sometimes going as far as literally filling recently integrated pools with concrete rather than share. You also see private Christian schools pop up with the explicit goal of being segregated.
Fun fact, organized evangelical involvement in right wing politics began with segregation. It’s only after the association with segregation became toxic did they pivot to abortion and homosexuality as their bête noire. They’ve tried their best to downplay this though, because it’s kind of an ugly truth.
Within this framework, the anti-government anti-public institution movement got rolling in the 1960s, and started to get a large political head by the 1970s and 1980s. The political turmoil within that period on the left in universities was a response and symptom of that anti-government swing, not a cause of it.
It is for certain possible that certain antics by academia during that time period came across as unpalatable to moderates, undermining their position. I just don’t think it was the cause.
>> First, reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer college level skills. That combined with computers means that the bar for government clerical work is much, much lower.
Which probably explains why most public services are FUBAR and stuffed full of incompetent idiots.
Two things.
First, reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer college level skills. That combined with computers means that the bar for government clerical work is much, much lower. The result is that in the 1920s a Philosophy grad would be extremely useful to a county government because of their general liberal arts education, nowadays a high school diploma does the trick. Doubly so now that everyone can use a computer to some degree or another. Without the critical function of providing clerks, Universities have lost a large amount of their value proposition to the government.
Second, since the 1970s both political parties have shifted away from the government as all of us striving together, to a necessary evil at best. The right has been extremely effective at villifying government action and government spending in particular. With that context in mind, it is not surprising that the right would aim to not only cut government spending on higher education (something that their religious wing also likes) to save on the tax money, but also to "starve the beast" in general.
Also, the 1970s were kinda crazy, and academia came out of that looking kinda extreme.