Majority of Republicans Say Colleges Have Negative Impact on the U.S.

At Pew Research, "Republicans skeptical of colleges’ impact on U.S., but most see benefits for workforce preparation":

Currently, 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say colleges and universities have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, while just 36% say their effect is positive, according to a survey conducted last month by Pew Research Center. Just two years ago, attitudes were the reverse: a 54% majority of Republicans and Republican leaners said colleges were having a positive effect, while 37% said their effect was negative.

Noah Rothman writes about this, at U.S.A. Today, "Conservatives are increasingly hostile to higher ed. Who can blame them?":

The collapse of GOP support coincides with the popularization of a militant brand of liberal political activism that gestates on college campuses.

The Pew Research Center has a new survey confirming that, as you'd expect, Republicans have little love for institutions such as media and labor unions. What's surprising, however, is the extent to which Republicans have grown hostile toward colleges and universities, and how quickly their attitudes have changed.

Pew found that 58% of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe that colleges and universities have a negative effect on “the way things are going in the country.” Only 36% disagreed. As recently as 2010, 55% of the GOP viewed colleges positively.

The shift Pew observed is too uniform to be random. This is a response to external conditions. The collapse of Republican support for colleges and universities coincides with the popularization of a militant brand of liberal political activism that gestates on campuses. Take, for example, the University of Missouri-Columbia.

In 2015, Mizzou students sparked a firestorm by rallying in defense of a student who claimed that the campus was plagued by people in pickups chanting racist slurs. That accusation reopened the still festering wounds resulting from clashes that had erupted between peaceful protesters, rioters and police in Ferguson just months earlier. The popular narrative in the news media and on the left — that a righteous protest against injustice had been summarily crushed by the heavy hand of law enforcement — led to disruptions across the country in 2015.

As The New York Times observed, the protests soon became typified by the Marxist ideal of “intersectionality,” which contends that all discrimination is rooted in class, gender and race and is therefore linked. The demonstrations swelled, a series of administrators resigned, and the intersectional student movement appeared victorious.

It was, however, a video featuring communications professor Melissa Click that turned the campus controversy into a national story. She was filmed attempting to prevent a student journalist from taking pictures of the protests and calling for “some muscle” to be deployed...

More.

RELATED: At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Details on University of Missouri cuts: 474 jobs cut; Mizzou takes the biggest hit."

Yeah, keep it up "intersectional" leftists. Just keep it up. Nothing hurts your movement more than destroying the life chances of everyday Americans. So keep it up. Overreach will destroy radical leftism. We need to see more of it.