Michael, fortunately, focuses attention back on the actual meaning of the quote from the Chinese dissident, Yu Jie, that I had posted as an Ethics Quote of the Week. I then confused the issue by expanding my commentary to the dangers (or, as commenter properly corrected me, theoretical dangers) of  U.S. indebtedness to China. My error, and I am grateful to Michael both for returning to the issue and his thoughtful comments.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Quote of the Week: Yu Jie:

“…No matter how craven our federal government has been, why are the Universities allowing themselves to be censored by the Chinese? There are two reasons:

(1) We have too many colleges in this country. The old fallacy that you have to expand or die has been embraced enthusiastically by colleges and boards of trustees across the US. Although the number of college aged children have not increased much, many (probably most) schools have added fancy new buildings and added a lot of students. There aren’t that many schools left who reject any but the most obviously unqualified students. In my state, the average ACT score for their incoming students is 2 points BELOW the national average of people who take the ACT! These students have almost no college funds so they have to have discounted tuition. How do the schools stay afloat with reduced state spending? Foreign students! They pay full, out-of-state tuition (unless they are illegal aliens, in which they pay in-state, but that is another issue). One foreign student is worth 4 in-state students, possibly more. A small number of Chinese students can make or break a budget. They may only be a small part of the budget, but they can exert an extreme amount of pressure on the administration.

(2) The demise of tenure and academic freedom. Tenure doesn’t mean what it used to. Academic freedom is often reserved for the administrations and is only theoretically present for the faculty. In the past, faculty would be free to invite speakers regardless of the administrations wishes. As long as it served an academic purpose, it could be done. Faculty used to run the speaker services and decide who to invite. That power has been usurped by the administrations. Faculty used to be able to disagree and argue with administration positions. Any faculty member who publicly disagrees with an administration position risks being charged with insubordination and fired, tenure or no tenure. I think we partially brought this on ourselves. So many colleges became liberal bastions, vocally contemptuous of the values and views of the majority of Americans that people wondered what this ‘academic freedom’ was for. It seemed mainly to allow ‘high-paid’ professors to scoff and mock the taxpayers and promote Communism, sexual promiscuity, and drug use all while teaching 3 hours of classes/week. In light of this view, people didn’t object to a reigning in of the faculty. I think if University faculty hadn’t become so ideologically out of balance with American society, I’m not sure we would have the current situation.