ABSTRACT
Legislative and executive authorities must be committed to maintaining public higher education at an adequate level of funding for institutions to offer a high-quality education to students. Higher education has become prominent on the political screen as the widespread perception that earning a bachelor’s degree is the absolute precondition for obtaining a better niche in the occupational structure. The rise of mass public higher education in America was a result of several influences, chiefly those that resulted from the problems associated with the post–World War II era. Economic pressures as much as the ideological assaults on the liberal arts account for the sea change in the curriculum that is in process in public higher education. For to capitulate to the “market”—which arguably wants something else because, in panic about an uncertain future, students and their parents really do not believe in the palaver of the “boom economy”—is to surrender the idea of higher education as a public good.
