ARCHAIC LAW MUST GO

The matter of the Higher Education Act (HEA) is a serious one. It
goes right to the heart of the ousiai, or essential purpose, of our
university and of higher education in general. Let us suppose the
ultimate purpose of higher education is to better the quality of life
and perceived dignity of society. At the most fundamental level,
education in the West is a process whereby the learner undergoes a
transformation of mind and soul, eventually emerging as an
enlightened member of society prepared to engage in citizenship and
teaching. At universities such as the University of Massachusetts,
students select from a wide variety of intellectual subjects so there
is a high amount of individual control in the improvement of minds.

Ideally, everyone would encounter this mental and spiritual
metamorphosis. Yet here there are two issues: the first is many do
not desire a scholarly education, and the second is there is a stated
need by individual institutions to rule out certain applicants in
order to maintain the quality of the atmosphere and education
offered. Without getting into the problem of incoherent and biased
admissions standards - a problem for which UMass is deeply implicated
- - there is an underlying assumption of pure meritocracy determining
access to tiers of quality in education.

The ostensible goal for everyone is free higher education for all;
the inability to provide this is rationalized with the insufficient
availability of funds. In fact, eliminating financial concerns would
likely go a long way in rectifying the merit-based access in higher
education. The shortcomings of the economic-tainted meritocracy are
glaring and well-documented by writers on both the right and the left
of the political spectrum, who mostly point out society and colleges
fail to distinguish between wealth and merit. There are a number of
reasons for this, including outdated admissions tests that reflect
socio-economic class and the fact that most qualified potential
applicants do not apply to top-notch schools because of their
astronomical cost.

So we have a situation in which higher education fails its ousiai.
Society is not transformed by our higher education system; even
willing minds are turned away by high costs and a host of other
"unfair" pressures. Rather, there is a growing gap, a conspicuous
deficit, between the formally educated and the not. There is no
mechanism to correct this contradiction and certainly no mechanism to
reach out and begin bridging the gap. This is at least partially the
result of well thought-out initiatives by politicians, particularly
those on the right who seek decreases in federal expenditures, at
least for public works and services. Strict conditionality for
financial aid is among the factors that lessen the money doled out
for higher education. The drug provision contained in the HEA is
clearly another effort to restrict this funding.

The difference here is the drug provision makes the university system
function as a punitive component of the justice system. Whereas the
actual public interest lies in the "rehabilitation" and societal
productivity of criminals (even the non-violent criminals that
consume or deal insignificant amounts of drugs), the HEA does just
the opposite: it refuses public assistance to so-called criminals who
are actively seeking reform. The problems of crime and poor education
in this country are therefore not only perpetuated, but exacerbated.

It is also important to note since the lower classes are more
susceptible to drug convictions, whether because they are more highly
policed or because economic deprivation creates need for clandestine
economics, they are disproportionately affected by the HEA. This is a
strong yet doubly unjust reaffirmation of the economic meritocracy
that corrupts higher education today. It deprives not only the
affected individuals, but society as a whole, of any sort of desirable future.