The Republican Party platform for 2016 includes plans to combat issues in higher education and free speech on college campuses, among others.
In the 66 pages of the GOP’s platform, in addition to free speech, other higher educations issues are addressed such as federal financial aid, liberalism on campuses, political indoctrination, and the need to encourage new systems of learning to complement traditional four-year colleges.
The GOP’s platform emphasizes that while private colleges and universities have the freedom to decide what to teach their students, public institutions should not promote the liberal agenda because they are funded by taxpayers.
“Our colleges, universities, and trade schools … form the world’s greatest assemblage of learning,” but “their excellence is being undermined by an ideological bias deeply entrenched within the current university system,” the platform stated.
The platform said the trustees of state schools “have a responsibility to the taxpayers to ensure that their enormous investment is not abused for political indoctrination.”
The platform also criticized the attack on free speech that has occurred on many college campuses nationwide. The platform rejected the idea of creating “zones of intellectual intolerance, or ‘safe zones,’ as if college students need protection from the free exchange of ideas.” Instead, the platform emphasized the value of freedom of speech.
“A student’s First Amendment rights do not end at the schoolhouse gates. Colleges, universities, and trade schools must not infringe on their freedom of speech and association in the name of political correctness,” the platform stated.
The rising cost of attending college and the student debt crisis is also mentioned. The Republican Party platform says that the “federal government should not be in the business of originating loans” and that private sector participation in student financing should be restored to bring down college costs.
The other part of the GOP’s platform that relates to higher education is creating and encouraging alternatives to four-year colleges. That could reduce dropout rates at colleges and universities and, consequently, help relieve the student debt crisis.
“Over half of recent college grads are unemployed or underemployed, working at jobs for which their expensive educations gave them no preparation,” the platform stated. “We need new systems of learning to compete with traditional four-year schools: Technical institutions, online universities, lifelong learning, and work-based learning in the private sector” because four-year institutions are “not the only path toward a prosperous and fulfilling career.”
The GOP also criticized the Obama administration’s Title IX directives in its platform and accused Democrats of deliberately misusing the law’s provisions to promote a progressive agenda.
