With Idaho Legislature’s recent bill to lower higher education’s budget, Idaho universities are facing the possibility of higher tuitions. These cuts are detrimental to students everywhere.
The reasons behind these cuts, however, are sure to drive outrage from all sides. In an email from University of Idaho President Scott Green, he addresses the reasons why this new budget was allowed to take place. According to Green, multiple special interest groups impacted the Idaho Legislature, especially the Idaho Freedom Foundation.
“They have targeted and tried to redefine issues of diversity, inclusion and social justice to create an illusion that higher education in Idaho is actively pursuing a political agenda wrought with ‘leftist’ ‘indoctrination,’” Green stated in his email.
The fact that a false narrative such as this was able to impact the decision making for the entire state is alarming. Spreading a story claiming that higher education automatically leads to one definite political ideology has no truth to it whatsoever and shows a definite bias in Idaho’s government.
For a long time, rumors such as these have spread about higher education, claiming that students go to college and “come back liberal.”
As a college student myself, I would like to challenge these claims. For the first eighteen years of their lives, teenagers typically spend their time at home or in their small hometown communities, under the guidance and influence of teachers, coaches and their families.
This period of their life is typically sheltered. The opinions of their family and those around them influencing the way they start to perceive the world.
When students finally decide to leave this little bubble that they’ve grown up in, they are introduced to much larger possibilities. In this new world, they’re often able to meet people and see places they never would’ve been able to in their adolescence.
Going to a college campus and meeting others from different lifestyles and backgrounds is usually enough to change a person greatly. It gives them a better perspective on ways to live life.
When many college students attend universities, they are given the opportunity to live on their own and form their own personalities away from parental judgment. People typically change as they get older, it’s what we as humans are supposed to do.
Sometimes that change might not always fit into the parent’s ideal version of their child. Yet to shelter them from seeing the world from a different lens, is not going to help their child in the long run.
Taking classes and seeing the world with a deeper lens should make students stronger in their beliefs and who they are. If they begin to sway towards a different view of life, then maybe that’s who they’ve decided to evolve into.
I have seen students from both sides of the political spectrum decide to change their views throughout college. Does that have to do with the university teachings or rather, does it play into the people they meet throughout college and how they decide to shape you?
Growing up in a small town, going to college only strengthened my personal beliefs and gave me the knowledge and support to better pursue my ideals. My high school education did not fully prepare me for life, and I find it sad that many people are never able to become educated beyond that.
A country full of educated people is more likely to be successful. Knowledge should be something to respect and aspire to, not to be feared and frowned upon. Creating a stigma about higher education will only hinder us in the future. Cutting off resources to achieve a state full of well-read, intelligent people is a threat to democracy, and quite frankly, a threat to the very same “freedoms” The Idaho Freedom Foundation promotes.
Support Idaho higher education, and support the professors and students working hard to not only better themselves, but the communities they live in.
Dani Moore can be reached at [email protected]