The forum included familiar faces — such as UNC System President Tom Ross and Chancellor Carol Folt — as well as local business leaders and professors.
Claude Clegg, professor of African American and diaspora studies and history at UNC, said the marketplace plays a direct role in the product higher education institutions produce. Education has become a product designed for individuals and their wants instead of what is best for the public good, he said.
“There’s a tendency to offer what students want to study instead of what they need to know,” he said.
Lloyd Kramer, a UNC history professor, said this represents a dramatic shift from America’s golden age, which took place in the decades after World War II.
“The model has shifted, somewhat, from a greater emphasis on the public good, or the public value of great public universities, to a more individualistic or market idea,” he said.
Kramer said this view of the market as an unimpeachable solution benefits those individuals who can afford higher education.
“I would affirm the continuing value of an intellectual community that tries to understand the sources and complexities of our shared problems,” he said.
Ross questioned whether all legislators understand the value of public education, and he suggested college might not be the path for every individual.
