What Reforms to Universities Might Be Permissible, Given the Politically Essential Functions That Universities Serve?

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Twelve
  In Roundtable Session: Access and Justice (Table 16)

Abstract

In response to David O’Brien, who makes a compelling case that certain progressive reforms to higher education – e.g. replacing merit-based financial aid with need-based financial aid and prohibiting legacy admissions – are impermissible by the lights of political liberalism, I try to lay the ground for a principled, politically liberal justification for these kinds of reform. I draw attention to higher education’s role in teaching future generations of workers certain socially necessary labor skills, and I raise the possibility that progressive reforms to higher education might be permissible, even by a strict politically liberal standard of the permissibility of state intervention, insofar as they better equip universities to serve this politically essential, and specifically pedagogical, function.

Author

• Hannah Widmaier, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author