Publicly Owned universities are premised on two arguments: (1) that such schools meet the needs of the poor in ways that private schools do not, and (2) that such schools allow more free exchange of ideas in ways that private (often religious) schools do not.
Both claims have been shattered by known data. Government colleges (and government funding of colleges, through programs such as the Student Loan Program) have DECREASED THE PROPORTION OF POOR PEOPLE IN HIGHER EDUCATION. See here, here and here. In fact, the true poor must labor in fast-food restaurants and on construction sites to pay for college life for the children of the middle class.
And government (and government-funded) colleges now engage in wide-scale discrimination and repression of anti-government thought.
Dixie State College (a public college in St. George, Utah) banned students from distributing flyers which criticized former President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara—because they “disparage[d]” and “mock[ed]” individuals.
On another occasion, a Dixie State administrator decided that the Young Americans for Liberty club’s “free speech wall” event would have to take place in the university’s unconstitutional “free speech zone,” comprising roughly 0.1 percent of campus. Neither the student-plaintiffs nor other administrators knew the free speech zone’s location, and it was not specified in any published university policy.
After a lawsuit, the University has backed down. See here.
