4 Questions to Ask Your College (or Your Kid’s College) If You Care About Intellectual Freedom

Former Reason Editor in
Chief and current Bloomberg View columnist
Virginia Postrel offers up “four specific questions that demand
factual answers” to gauge a college or university’s commitment to
the free and open exchange of ideas.

The whole list is a must-read but this one caught my eye
especially because it’s so true and generally underappreciated:

3) What is the administrator-to-professor ratio? How
much has that grown in the last 10 years?

This question illuminates where the university’s priorities lie
— in teaching and research or in overhead — while also offering a
clue about attitudes toward academic freedom and students’ rights.
Administrators, not professors, are the ones making and enforcing
rules against speech. They are the ones more concerned with
maintaining order and a shiny institutional image than with
intellectual inquiry and the marketplace of ideas.

“The administrative class is largely responsible for the
hyperregulation of students’ lives, the lowering of due process
standards for students accused of offenses, the extension of
administrative jurisdiction far off campus, the proliferation of
speech codes, and outright attempts to impose ideological
conformity,” writes [Greg] Lukianoff in his book “Unlearning Liberty: Campus
Censorship and the End of American Debate.” He argues that “the
dramatic expansion of the administrative class on campus may
be the most important factor in the growth of
campus intrusions into free speech and thought.”

Read the whole thing.

Reason TV interviewed Postrel about her new book, The Power of
Glamour, and much more. Watch below: