Vx: Frustrated by liberal universities, conservatives aim to defund and destroy

[Anna Komnene]

We shouldn't be using taxpayer money to pay for people to be indoctrinated by marxists for useless liberal arts degrees. We need to refocus our spending on education towards useful degrees in STEM. If someone is studying for a STEM degree they should be eligible for enough grants to make it a free ride so long as they maintain good grades and their parents income isn't too high. Next, get rid of subsidized student loans, and bring back the ability to discharge student loans through bankruptcy. That way if some idiot wants to borrow $100,000 or more to major in gender studies or some other useless degree, they have to show the lender they have the ability to pay it back, this will make it harder to get student loans.

This would be a great way to drive down the wages of STEM majors.  You'd know this if you took econ.

[Anna Komnene]

Well, my understanding is that the reduction state funding for public universities and colleges is something that's been happening for for quite a while, more or less independent of any concern over universities' ideological outlook.

The recession caused states to cut back and many never restored funding, or only partially. Since then, you've had numerous GOP-controlled states trashing the universities rhetorically and then proceeding to make changes and cuts that are detrimental to their well-being. Republicans have been railing against higher education for a while now. Given their power at the state level, of course they would move on this.

Well, not just the GOP either.  Cuomo has been throwing higher education under the bus for years.  It's one of his favorite pastimes.  Or at least he did until Trump got elected and he decided "sensible fiscal conservative" wasn't en vogue anymore.