The Rural Retreat

The last thing higher education — or American society and politics — needs is a further retreat from rural and small town America. But that’s exactly what’s happening.

Yesterday the UW announced that it was closing its two-year Waukesha campus. That brings to five the number of two-year institutions that the UW will be shuttering over the next year or so. The others are Richland Center, Washington County, Marinette and Fond du Lac.

And on the same day of the Waukesha announcement, Northland College in Ashland announced that it needs to quickly raise $12 million or face ending its 138-year run.

This is part of a national trend. At least 50 small liberal arts colleges have closed or announced their intention to do so since 2020.

America is divided along a lot of lines right now. But if I were to select one defining split it’s over education. Nothing better predicts how someone will vote (or their tastes and views on many other things) than whether that person has got a four-year college degree. People with those degrees are overwhelmingly liberal and vote for Democrats. People without them are pretty conservative and vote for Republicans. That in itself wouldn’t be so bad if it were the old GOP. But this new hard-right populist, Trumpy party borders on fascism on days when it doesn’t actually cross the border.

These schools are closing for understandable economic and business reasons. They got smacked by the pandemic only to face a shrinking customer base. There are just fewer college-aged kids out there. So, as a business proposition, I understand why they have to go.

But I also think these institutions served another purpose. They planted the flag of blue America in parts of red America. I would have hoped that mixing things up like that would have created a little bit of understanding on both sides. I can’t say I have any hard evidence that it did. But now even those outposts are disappearing.

There is no greater task for America than to bridge at least some of the divide between those with college degrees and those without. I have often written here that the college-educated need to stop being such preachy, self-righteous know-it-alls. They’d do their causes some good if they’d just shut the heck up for a minute. I really do think that much of the resistance to polices that would, for example, fight climate change and racial discrimination has to do with dislike for the annoying messengers.

On the other hand, I don’t care how justifiably frustrated you are with college-educated liberals, there’s just no justification for supporting Donald Trump. The man has taken to quoting Hitler, for cryin’ out loud.

If I were to start from scratch and try to solve this problem I’d probably suggest, among a lot of other things, putting small colleges in small towns across rural America. We’re now going in just the opposite direction. I don’t know how much this might deepen a divide that’s already a chasm, but it does feel like even the rickety bridges are beginning to fall.