While the Clean Power Plan will require a massive tax increase and regressive consumer rate hikes, it simultaneously will reduce the number of those employed and thus able to shoulder the new tax burden.
But the first casualty has already been tallied—the freedom to learn.
We know from the Collegiate Learning Assessment that 36 percent of college students across the country, after four years in education, show little to no increase in critical thinking or complex reading and writing skills.
This means that, of all the students who enroll in college, only 32 percent succeed in acquiring both a degree and the knowledge that a degree is meant to signify.
We are concerned by research showing that over the past 40 years the bulk of university budget increases have not gone to teaching and learning, but to administration.
Fear, intimidation, and uniformity are usurping the free, robust inquiry and debate that is the lifeblood of a genuine institution of higher learning, undermining both academic truth-seeking and democracy, which depends on an informed citizenry.
Such a bold proclamation would surely make news, would get the universities’ attention, and, just possibly, might prod a movement to restore the academic freedom on which America’s intellectual and political progress depend.
The Framers of the Constitution knew well the tendency of officeholders to attempt to encroach on the rights of the other branches.
Seventy-five percent of respondents declared college simply unaffordable.
We could come again to understand why the future of our democracy depends on properly celebrating the Fourth of July.
This is not their fault. U.S. Department of Education statistics show that, today, roughly two out of every three college students graduate without ever having taken even one course in American government.
In doing so, the Court has failed in its fundamental responsibility to interpret the Constitution in an honest, nonpartisan manner.