Alarmed by the rhetoric in State Auditor Shad White’s recent “report” on brain drain and higher education in Mississippi, members of your union have composed a statement in reply. In our local chapters, we hope to discuss ways to disseminate this letter and take further action in response to the Auditor’s public statements.
Here is the complete statement:
“During his term of office, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White has been accused of focusing his office’s energies on irrelevant and trumped up transgressions while slow playing the largest welfare scandal in state history. His new “report” on higher education continues his pattern of supporting his political allies and his own ambitions over the interests of the state of Mississippi. We object to this proposal in the strongest terms. We believe it is nothing more than culture war politics. But even taking the argument on its own terms, White has not given good reasons for supporting his conclusion. In this response we will outline some of the many flawed and misleading features of White’s report.
White’s report recommends that higher education funding be allocated based on (1) the median salaries of graduates in specific majors and (2) the likelihood of graduates with those majors staying in the state. To begin with, White assumes that the only benefit Mississippians gain from university education is a higher wage for graduates. But universities clearly make many other valuable contributions to the state. They provide important research, encourage students to become well-rounded citizens, train capable teachers, and offer enriching experiences beyond job training. Mississippi has long prided itself on the creativity of its citizens. An education system that abandons the humanities and other fields that White considers “low-value” will do little to sustain that proud tradition.
The people of Mississippi can never be reduced to simple economic functions. Earning a living wage is a goal to which all education contributes, but so much of what makes this state great cannot be summed up in misleading salary statistics. Our colleges and universities do not exist solely to “produce graduates who complement Mississippi’s workforce needs.” They exist to enable students to pursue the study of subjects they find meaningful and important. According to Auditor White’s logic, a pastor who enriches the spiritual lives of congregants is worth less to Mississippians than an investment banker who profits from stock market speculation. (In any case, successful investing requires a breadth of knowledge that a liberal arts education is demonstrably well-equipped to provide.)
Another misguided assumption in the report is that college students and their families are not themselves taxpayers. All citizens pay taxes with the understanding that they will be able to access a high-quality education of their choosing. The report disregards the autonomy of students and the families who support them. It is a clear case of government overreach into the lives and decisions of young Mississippians. Ensuring that our colleges and universities provide the best possible range of opportunities is an obvious way to ensure that talented students can find what they are looking for. This strategy would undoubtedly do much to slow the departure of many who leave Mississippi before college because they find better options for higher learning in other states.
The report also assumes wrongly that the economy never changes. A recent report suggests that by 2029, even at current graduation rates, Mississippi will lose $6.9 billion in economic output due to lack of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Mississippi needs to encourage as many young people to pursue college degrees as possible, in all fields of study. According to research by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, employers value well-rounded skills like critical thinking, written and oral communication, cultural competency, and teamwork, the exact sorts of skills students learn through broad liberal arts education. Moreover, STEM fields are among those in which AI is most rapidly replacing human tasks. To adapt to a rapidly changing economy, students would benefit from human-oriented skills that will help them adapt to new types of work throughout their careers.
Auditor White’s proposals are supposed to address brain drain, but they do nothing to address the reasons that skilled professionals leave Mississippi in the first place. If the State government were serious about stopping brain drain, they would focus on making Mississippi a place with even more to offer, a state that could better serve us as citizens and attract new residents. They would increase support for the arts and family-friendly events, provide better funding for public schools, expand Medicaid so that medical facilities in the state can stay open, and support unionization. After all, union jobs are higher paid, come with better benefits, and keep more money in workers’ pockets rather than in the pockets of CEOs and shareholders living out of the state. Economists have clearly established that right-to-work states are measurably worse off in all significant metrics. Mississippi could also pay full tuition and living stipends for all qualified students. This would be one of the greatest investments that we could make in the future of our state. If young professionals knew their children could benefit from a free, quality education, more young people would consider staying in Mississippi after graduation.
It is important to note that state tax funds provide only a small—and declining—portion of the funding for higher education in Mississippi. At the University of Mississippi, for example, less than 13% of operating revenues are provided by the state. Higher education is not, and never can be a business, but even if it were, such a small stakeholder would not be entitled to demand such bold changes. We suggest that, rather than wasting resources on politically motivated misinformation, the state would do better to increase the funding it provides to higher education institutions that benefit Mississippi and the United States in ways reaching well beyond the salaries of recent graduates. As things stand right now, Mississippians who wish to attend college are facing financial burdens that are far too high and, on average, offset the benefits of higher salary expectations for graduates. Even if Auditor White’s goal actually were improving the prosperity of Mississippians, his strategy would be worse than useless. Enabling people to complete college degrees without debilitating debt would be by far the most direct and effective means of achieving that goal.
In the final analysis, we must recognize that this report is a dog whistle. It is a divisive attempt to justify gutting programs and to appeal to White’s political allies. It is not simply an attack on fields like Sociology and Anthropology, but on fields that help students to ask questions about how and why the world is the way that it is, and how to make it better, together. It is not simply an attack on fields like African American Studies and Gender Studies, but an attack on women, Black people, and on Mississippians whose gender identities don’t fit neatly into outmoded and intolerant ideals that White seems to want to perpetuate. The report is not simply an attack on German Language and Literature, but on students’ chances to gain new perspectives on cultures different from their own. It’s how we create a more empathetic and tolerant world. We must unite to make Mississippi a better place to live for all and reject the Auditor’s baseless conclusions.
We call on college and university leadership throughout the state to reject this report and affirm the importance of all our current fields of study as well as new ones that will emerge when the values of innovation and advancement that we hold dear are encouraged to thrive.”
United Campus Workers of Mississippi 