Since 1980—for 40 years—we’ve heard it: Government is not the solution; government is the problem.
Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan articulated that sentiment in rank states’ rights terms at the Neshoba County Fair, August 3, 1980. One result has been the persistent move, over those 40 years, to privatize the functions of government, to turn over to a business concern or to individuals’ responsibility what had been a government function.
Higher education is an emblematic example. There was a time when the cost of a college education at a four-year state institution was affordable, even for working-class families. When I joined the faculty of Southern Miss in 1978, state tax revenues covered well over half the university’s budget. Today, the state’s share is less than one-fourth. And that’s the case for all eight schools governed by the IHL Board.
Over time, Legislative appropriations for the IHL have passed more and more of the cost of education to students (or their families). So much so that those eight institutions might as well be private schools: they are so dependent on tuition for their budgets.
The universities demonstrate a critical problem with privatization: that institutions dependent on “customers” do not weather crises well.
Universities that depend on student tuition to foot the bills are not equipped to weather this crisis. They are not resilient. When the customer base shrinks, the funding shrinks, and the institution withers.
What WILL college students do this fall? Even if the schools open, will students return to campus? What will happen to enrollment? All eight IHL institutions are now at risk. We know that the virus is spread in crowds by our very breath. What are colleges but relatively organized crowds: in classes, at concerts and ball games, in dorms and apartments? How will the state’s universities weather this crisis?
The same thing has happened to the state’s prison system. Its plight is but a different form of privatization. It’s not like the financial cost of running the prisons has been shifted to the inmates, but with less and less money and less and less government oversight, the prisoners have in fact incurred a great cost: in greater violence; more deaths; substandard health care; squalid conditions; and limited literacy training. How will the prison system weather this crisis?
It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy of course, this Reagan’s Refrain: government is not the solution; government is the problem. When we elect enough legislators who do not believe in government, then sure enough, as they run it, the government they create actually does becomes the problem. Exhibits A and B: public higher education and the prison system. How will they weather this crisis?
Thankfully, the last few years, the citizens of Mississippi have elected a number of young legislators who do not sing Reagan’s Refrain, men and women who, joining with a small cadre of courageous members already there, are not afraid to use the powerful levers of government for the common good of all the state’s citizens.
Conville is a retired college professor and long-time Hattiesburg resident.
