Charter universities: one more step in the abrogation of government's obligation to educate its citizens

Charter universities would be bad for students, taxpayers
Saturday, March 12, 2011 02:53 AM


In the past few weeks, Gov. John Kasich, Chancellor Jim Petro, Inter-University Council President Bruce Johnson and several public-university presidents have touted the idea of shifting Ohio’s public university system to a charter university system. They describe the charter-university idea as a simple one: Public universities would receive less money in state subsidies in return for less state government regulation.

This “flexibility” will then lead to cures for all of our higher-education ills. This is not an accurate portrayal of the potentially dramatic and dangerous turn the charter university idea would be for Ohio’s citizens. Rather, it would be another taxpayer-funded privatization scheme that will ultimately hurt Ohio’s students and future economic growth.

For generations, Ohio’s taxpayers and elected officials have made a commitment to providing a high-quality, affordable and accessible public-college education to the next generation. In fact, our current governor and at least 82 out of the 132 members of the 129th General Assembly have enjoyed the benefits of an Ohio public-university education. Now, under the pretext of the state’s current fiscal crisis, flexibility and a private-sector-knows-best attitude, Republican leadership wants to abandon this commitment and dismantle Ohio’s public university system.
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