Kevin M. Kruse: I graduated from UNC thirty years ago and it feels like every year since I’ve had to watch as Republicans in the state legislature strip it for parts, like cheap crooks stealing copper wiring off a construction site.

I graduated from UNC thirty years ago and it feels like every year since I’ve had to watch as Republicans in the state legislature strip it for parts, like cheap crooks stealing copper wiring off a construction site.

When I was growing up, North Carolina had among the best public universities in the country. Now the UNC system is dismantling programs and quelling student dissent.

Went to a community meeting ca. 2011 with ~50 ppl asking questions to Thom Tillis, and in my memory like half of them were asking versions of "Do you realize your ed stances would mean knocking down an advantage NC has historically had over other southern states?" It was absolutely foreseeable.

It's worse: the thieves in question don't even want the copper, they want the building site to be abandoned, and for no better reason than a deep sense of malice. The NC GOP is painfully aware they represent less of the state every day. They can't change that, but they can make everyone suffer.

The whole battle over gerrymandering is because they know they can't win honest elections. The dismantling of the state-constitutionally-encouraged university system is an admission they know they're intellectually bankrupt.

I'm sorry--when I skeeting I doubted my own memory, and now I've checked. The North Carolina State Constitution *mandates* the public university system (Art. IX, sec. 8). My bad.

/sighs sadly and knowingly in Longhorn

Came here to say basically this. 😞

I went there just as Republicans took power and started the demolition. The cost of tuition rose roughly 50% between when I started and finished, even after adjusting for inflation cashier.unc.edu/tuition-fees...

Gutting democracy let the GOP gut North Carolina's university system. Gerrymandering ensures GOP control over the Board of Governors & state budget. The GOP also usurped Dem Gov. Cooper's power to appoint college trustee boards after he beat GOP Gov. McCrory in 2016 but before Cooper took office

I was in college *50* years ago, when education was considered an investment in the excellence that made America the envy of the world. Each decade since has eroded that idea. Now getting that college "education" too often becomes a financial albatross and leads to a career of unfulfilling jobs.

I'm in my mid thirties and am honestly starting to really regret not pursuing the brief teenage impulse I had to go into trucking. Would be doing way, way better financially.

Not lately. Truckers are getting screwed over quit brutally right now

Still would have left me better off and better positioned for a career pivot than I am now

I'm probably stating the obvious, but higher education was *heavily* subsidized by taxpayer dollars way back then. A kid could go to a state school for $2K or less per year and get a great education. Now you're on the hook for $60K or more on what could be a $30K/yr salary.

My dad comfortably paid his way through undergrad (tuition, housing and expenses) working a summer job in a fleet garage in the 60s. I worked part-time, 20 to 30 hours a week, through college and paid for my apartment and groceries.

Also seen as terrifying propaganda mills that will make your children turn away from god by a dedicated chunk of the population

We can all thank Jesse Helms. Or celebrate the fact that he’s burning in hell.

In the 1960s Iowa had a first rate education system. The dismantling began in earnest in the 1990s, and the system was mortally wounded in the early 2000s with a sweeping “reform” act. Higher education and literacy rates have plummeted… allowing the likes of Kim Reynolds to flourish.

Well Mr. Smarty-pants, if you're college edumacated why don't you stop'em?? /s These fuckers have been at it since Nixon - they put a bullseye on college campuses since then!

Since God and Man At Yale, tbh. Just took a while to get the engine revved up.

UNC was obviously a point of pride and a source of good memories for you. I'm sorry for what you're going through.

My wife got her doctorate from UNC, and her department chair was Kevin Guskiewicz. It’s been fascinating to watch him move up the ranks to UNC chancellor. It was a major loss to UNC when he left.

He Came From the Frying Pan. Can He Manage the Fire?www.chronicle.com Governance strife drove Kevin Guskiewicz from Chapel Hill to Michigan State University, where he has a pledge of good behavior from a board known for its meddling. Will it last?

Doing a week-long college visit crawl with my daughter next week. UNCA is on the agenda, but feeling some hesitation. Her interest is in the pure sciences - including chemistry.

Silly liberal. Don’t you know it’s more important to give tax cuts to old wealthy people than to give education to poor young people? Guess they didn’t teach freedom at UNC in the 90s. Too busy teaching postmodern feminism I guess.

Until athletes stop attending it won't matter.

This is the general experience of being from Iowa these days

Awww the sweet smell of rotting infrastructure corpses - brings back memories of 1990s in post-Soviet Russia where the scraping for parts by the social conservatives, namely the former Communist Party bosses, was happening very literally.

If it makes you feel better, New Jersey did the same thing with Rutgers under successive Democratic state legislatures

And the Dems just let them. “Oh no! Whatever can we do? Vote for us while we do nothing to stop the autocracy headed our way.”

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