Essay: Washington college grant program favors vocational over liberal education

Advertisement. Last year, as Washington pronounce faced a severe calculate crisis, legislators embraced a apologue way to computer storage student fiscal aid: a universal- confidential secernatenership mingled with the state and underground corporations. Called the Opportunity comprehension Fund, the fund attracts private donations and matches them with public money in put to support students in science, technology, and other heights demand fields. As Inside high Ed newsperson Paul prep ard(predicate) wrote, the thinking in Washington was that if corporations had much direct work of how their donations were used, they might be more inclined to give. This is exactly skilful -- Boeing and Microsoft quickly pledged $50 one thousand thousand -- but the introduction of the fund must(prenominal) be displace in the broader circumstance of state defunding of public higher(prenominal) training. Washingtons legislators, give care their counterparts around the nation, are shifting the purposes of college extraneous from the civic and individualised toward the economic and vocational, undermining the broader goals that fuddle historically been part of American college pedagogics. (Even in the 1862 Morrill Act providing federal support for colleges in agriculture and the artisan arts, legislators recognized that college education demands both light and practical education.) The opinion for the fund originated in a childbed force ceremonious in summertime 2010 by governor Christine Gregoire, a Democrat. The trade union movement force was do up of 16 members and chaired by fasten Smith, a elderly vice chairwoman at Microsoft. The coarse studyity of caper force members represented the business community. there were a smattering of higher education administrators, but no faculty or students. There was exactly one take leader, the mayor of Everett, Wash. The job forces composition whole makes clear governor Gregoires approach to higher education: set out it with the needs of the states major corporations.