Kent State President claps back at Vivek. It's about damn time.
I don't know if Ted Diacon read 10th Period prior to his defiant op-ed, but it sure has a 10th Period flavor to it! Never been more proud to have a KSU degree!
Credit where credit is due. I’ve said for years that the No. 1 reason Ohio Republicans have been able to run roughshod over both public K-12 and higher education systems is because the folks running those systems have let them.
As my mentor at the Beacon Journal used to tell me: If they’re getting away with it, it’s your fault.
These folks too afraid of being cut worse, just let Ohio Republicans cut them bad and offer mostly tepid resistance.
Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised that Kent State University President Ted Diacon took on Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s call to close his and other public universities. And you know what? He sounded awfully 10th period-y doing it.
Point of personal privilege: As a Kent State grad, the husband of a triple KSU grad and the son of two KSU grads who met at KSU, I have to say I was pretty damn proud that it was my alma mater — and home — who stood fast and stood first.
“At Kent State, state appropriations now account for roughly 22% of our operating budget. In the (Gov. James A. Rhodes) era, that figure was closer to 75%. The universities didn’t drift into this moment. Even though public investment was quietly withdrawn over decades, our institutions have continued to deliver ever-improving results.”
Sounds a lot like this chart I posted a few weeks back, doesn’t it?
Again, state support for tuition (state share of instruction is the official, lifeless bureaucratic name) has dropped to its smallest share of the state budget ever — less than 1/2 what it was in the 1970s — the Rhodes Era Diacon mentioned.
Enrollment has been a challenge at public universities serving first-generation students because those students typically come from working class families who can’t afford to pay $20-25,000 a year for college. If the state simply committed the same percentage o the state budget to tuition support as it did 30 years ago, we’d essentially have free 2-year and all-but-free 4-year tuition for Ohio families.
This doesn’t even contemplate higher taxes or anything. Just a similar commitment to our kids’ futures that our parents made for us. It’s no more complicated than that.
See, I bet that if you made college affordable, schools whose enrollment comes from working-class families would have far less of an enrollment problem.
But Vivek doesn’t think so. He wants to shut down those schools. In the middle of the Innovation Age.
Because he’s an asshole billionnaire.
Which brings me back to Diacon. He invited Vivek to show up at Kent State and see all the great work it’s able to do, despite state neglect. I hope he tells Vivek, “imagine what we could do if you cared about pubic higher education as much as Republican Gov. James Rhodes did?”
I don’t know if he will. But man, am I glad that he called bullshit on Vivek. Because what the billionaire who shipped his company to Texas from Ohio is talking about is that: Bullshit.
I hope more education leaders follow Diacon in calling out the bullshit. I hope they recognize their own power (imagine if every school district brought 1 school bus full of kids to the capital during budget season? Think those assholes would think twice about cutting education if 612 busloads of kids showed up?).
I hope more education leaders dare the state to follow through with its threats to eliminate funding if those schools dare tell the truth on history, sociology, etc.
I hope more education leaders use their voices to advocate for their students, institutions and state.
I hope this is the beginning.
For this is the way.