Inez Feltscher Stepman joins the podcast this week to talk about the issue of free speech on college campuses. With rising tuition costs and the increasing politicization of classroom space, public confidence in institutions of higher ed are at an all-time low. Inez breaks down where we are and why the free-speech victories in the courts are being ignored by many colleges and universities across the country.

Inez is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum. She has worked in education policy for seven years, and prior to joining IWF was the Director of Education and Workforce Development at the American Legislative Exchange Council. Stepman’s research focuses on educational freedom, school choice, and the cultural impact of empowering parents with control over their children’s educations.

Read our Policy Focus: Free Speech on College Campus here. 

Hallberg:
Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host Beverly Hallberg, and on this episode we focus on the issue of free speech on college campuses. With public confidence in these institutions waning as tuition costs increase, is there anything that can be done?

Hallberg:
Well, joining us to break it down is Inez Feltscher Stepman. Inez is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum. She has worked in education policy for seven years, and prior to joining IWF was the Director of Education and Workforce Development at the American Legislative Exchange Council. Stepman’s research focuses on educational freedom, school choice, and the cultural impact of empowering parents with control over their children’s educations.

Hallberg:
Inez, thank you so much for joining us.

Stepman:
Thanks for having me, Beverly.

Hallberg:
So I’m excited to have you on because you have a new joint policy study that you’ve done with IWF’s Independent Women’s Law Center, the new center that’s been open to IWF, that is looking not just at what’s going on in college campuses with free speech, but also where the legal battles are on that. So break that down for us a little bit. Why did you decide to do this joint policy study that brought in the legal side?

Stepman:
Yeah. So we thought that there are really two different battles going on in what I would call, I think, a crisis of free speech on our college campuses across the country, and the first aspect of that is in the courts, right? So we have seen a bunch of cases in recent years usually decided in favor of students or faculty free speech, usually decided against universities. There have been dozens of settlements, high dollar settlements, from universities when they have actually violated the constitution and positive law by restricting students free speech, or restricting faculty’s free speech, in ways that is public [inaudible 00:02:02] public universities, they’re simply not permitted to do under our constitution and under our law.

Stepman:
On the, so that’s kind of the positive side. On the flip side, unfortunately, we’re not seeing that them losing in court is actually changing their behavior all that much. So despite, take one issue for example, free speech zones where universities unconstitutionally restrict free speech, that is political or other kinds of free speech of students, to a very tiny part of campus where nobody can actually hear the speech. So that has been struck down in courts over and over and over again, and it’s very constitutionally clear that public universities cannot restrict speech to a tiny corner of their campuses, and yet we see universities across the country still implementing these kinds of free speech zones. And in fact FIRE, which is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, they ranked universities in a green light system, right, green light, yellow light, red light, on free speech zones and a variety of other university policies that violate free speech, and they’ve found that 91% of universities are still in the yellow or red zone. Meaning they have either policies that are clearly unconstitutional, or they have policies that are probably unconstitutional because they are, for example, too vague or they sweep in protected speech with harassment or other other categories of conduct that can legally be banned.

Stepman:
So what we’re seeing is this very positive story in the courts where free speech is winning victory after victory, and then this much less positive story on the ground where we repeatedly see violations of students and faculty free speech in universities despite the fact they’re losing in court. So what we tried to do with this policy focus is highlight the story in the courts, and say, yeah, I mean, we’re winning and this is a good thing, it’s a good thing that we have the courts as a back stop against this culture on campus. But then actually looking at the culture on campus, and then perhaps proposing some policy solutions as to how we could go about actually making sure that universities respect the freedom of speech.

Hallberg:
And people can read that policy focus on iwf.org, so go look it up, it’s a great read. And the question I think people would naturally ask is if they are violating the constitution, violating free speech laws, how are they able to do this? Are they just banking, are the administrators of these universities, just banking they won’t get sued? Or even if they do get sued, that it will take a long time to get through the court system? Why are they choosing this?

Stepman:
So it’s both, these cases can take years, they can draw, drag on for years, in part because of a doctrine called qualified immunity, by which administrators are not personally responsible for the violations that they conduct. In the vast majority of cases, you’re suing the university as an entity and the state as an entity, rather than individuals making unconstitutional decisions. And we see that doctrine primarily in, come up in courts in the case of police officers, but now it’s applying in university, universities, and that definitely drags out the court process.

Stepman:
But usually at the end of this dragged out process, it usually does result either in a judgment against the university or a settlement with the student whose rights had been violated. So universities are paying out settlements, I mean, sometimes very large settlements, a quarter million dollars, for example, recently. But we’re seeing that that’s not enough to make them less afraid of what I would term the sort of social justice wing of campus, so they’re balancing, university administrations, are balancing, in what I think is quite cowardly way, that they would rather be sued every couple of years. Maybe they’ll have to pay out a settlement to a student whose rights they violated, but they’re less afraid of doing that every couple of years than they are of making the campus less angry, being accused of being racist and bigoted and not caring about the rights of minority students. And so they’re balancing those two things, and they’re actually more afraid oftentimes of the campus left than they are of losing a lawsuit every few years. [crosstalk 00:06:12]

Hallberg:
This also … Yeah. Let me, I’m just curious on that. Do you think that this is also the administration of these different colleges and universities also tailoring this to what the students want? Is this, part of this, because so many people who attend colleges and universities think that we need to have free speech zones?

Stepman:
Well, there’s a debate currently going on as to exactly what percentage of college students actually hold these beliefs and what percentage is just afraid to speak up, right? We have an epidemic of self-censorship on college campuses, recently a [inaudible 00:06:46] survey found that 68% of college students have, report having self-censored. That means that they did not express a political point of view or other kind of point of view, because they were terrified of the backlash that they would get for doing so.

Stepman:
But regardless, the numbers don’t look good in terms of the upcoming generation and how they feel about free speech. So 41% of gen Z’ers responded that offensive speech should not be protected by the first amendment, so that’s 4 in 10 saying offensive speech should not be protected. I mean, the first amendment is for offensive speech. If it’s inoffensive speech, it largely doesn’t need protection because nobody wants to shut it down.

Stepman:
And even more disturbing is a 1 in 5 students in college campuses actually think it’s all right to respond with violence to offensive speech. So they, this is a category of the left that thinks that speech can be violence, if it’s offensive to them, that speech is violence, and therefore they are justified in responding with violence to speech . And these, you see this dynamic playing out on college campuses, you see speakers with whom the top campus leftist [inaudible 00:07:59] getting violently shut down. We’ve all seen those incidents in, for example, Middlebury College and in UC Berkeley with Ben Shapiro speaking on campus, for example. We’ve seen this one-fifth of folks on campus who believe that they are morally in the right to respond to violence, with violence to speech.

Stepman:
So that’s, I definitely think that there is this culture on campus that is not being addressed, for example through the courts, and I, in this policy focus we propose a number of policy solutions essentially to change the calculus for university administrations so that they are encouraged to have more of a spine in standing up to that culture on campus, and actually living up to their obligations that they have, as I said, both under the constitution and under positive federal law, and in many cases under state law, to protect the freedom of speech that is such a bedrock of American politics, institutions, and of a Republic.

Hallberg:
And you can even see just people’s confidence in these institutions is waning as a whole. You see that Republicans, of course, more than Democrats are very wary of what is being taught and how young people are being indoctrinated on campuses. So when it comes to these policies that you suggest, and what can be done on a state or what can be done on a federal level, do you see any movement with policies? I know you you have good ideas of what we can do, but do you see elected officials also trying to pick up the torch and defend free speech on college campuses?

Stepman:
We definitely see some movement on the state level. So we have seen an encouragingly bipartisan consensus building in a lot of state legislatures. Now they just agree on the specifics, there are different aspects of free speech legislation that they disagree on, Republicans and Democrats, but we’ve actually seen an encouraging consensus between for sure all, almost all Republicans, but a surprising number of Democrats, even liberal Democrats, that free speech is worth protecting on college campuses. And so we’ve seen some really positive legislation advance, for example, in states like Arizona, but we’ve even seen resolutions passed in as liberal states as California where I am now, which did pass in the last session a resolution aimed at the university saying, “You need to protect free speech on campus.” And while, folks might say, “Okay, a resolution is not the same as having legislation with teeth in it,” it is still a good marker to lay down that even in a state as liberal as California, this is a concern, this is a concern even for liberal Democrats.

Stepman:
On the federal level, we recently saw some rumblings about the potential reauthorization of the HEA, that’s the Higher Education Act, and that was a more frustrating story. Although the act hasn’t passed, and is unlikely to because talks between Republicans and Democrats have broken down for other reasons, what we saw were Republican elected officials unwilling to attach an amendment about free speech that would tie the enormous amount of student loan underwriting that the federal government does … I mean, the federal government basically backs 90% of student loans, that is the lifeblood of universities across the country. This is a huge amount of money, we have $1.6 trillion in outstanding student loan debt, and this is a huge pot of money. But Republicans were unwilling to tie those Title IV funds to a basic amendment that said, “If you’re a public university these are your obligations according to the courts, and under our constitution you already have these obligations. They’re already written into law, and if you fail to follow them we’re going to turn off the money.” And we saw Republicans just totally unwilling to embrace that amendment, and I think that was really disappointing.

Stepman:
Now the whole bill didn’t pass, so it didn’t end up mattering too much, but it shows something troubling. You mentioned that Republican voters are losing faith as, in the universities as institutions. So we’ve seen an enormous drop off in the last four years, just in the last four years, where there used to be a bipartisan consensus. Both Republicans and Democrats said with strong majorities that our universities are a positive benefit for the country, now fewer than one in three Republicans thinks that universities overall, overall, are even a positive thing for the country.

Stepman:
And I will just warn universities that they can’t continue to accept these trillions in taxpayer largess and expect that they’re going to disappoint continually more than half the country in terms of living up to their obligations. So I would, I guess I would encourage Republican elected officials to understand where their voters are on this, on universities, and to have a little more spine and to be willing to tie these federal dollars to obligations that, as I keep repeating, universities already have, this is just about attaching more serious consequences to their continued violation of those obligations.

Hallberg:
And I’m glad that you brought up the lone factor, because the topic of conversation is how much it costs to get a college education, and that’s a real, it’s a real problem when you see that the cost of getting a degree far outpaces inflation and other products that we purchase in life. People always point to, well, this means that we need to listen to Bernie Sanders and make college tuition free, free college for everyone, but you tie it back to this, the fact that so much of this is because universities get so much money from the government. How is that connected to the rising cost of tuition?

Stepman:
It’s very connected. As you mentioned, college costs have been soaring above inflation for a couple of decades now, and it’s part of the reason we have this student loan crisis, right? There’s often the, there’s the old Economy Steve meme that was popular a couple of years ago, right, about folks who had maybe gone to college 20, 30, 40 years ago complaining that Millennials and Gen Z’ers, “Why don’t they just work their way through college? Why did they take out these big loans?” The reality is that college costs in real dollars have gone so far up that it’s almost always impossible for an 18-year-old or a 20-year-old to be able to work off a substantial amount of tuition and living expenses. So the average tuition and and expenses at a public university is now topping $20,000 a year, so that’s $80,000 over the course of four years. And then at a private university, it’s topping $45,000 per year, right? So those are astronomical costs, and we’re not seeing the value of the degree as living up to those costs.

Stepman:
So we do see the fact that folks with college degrees, they do tend to have higher lifetime earnings. But the gap between what the opportunities that a degree will offer, and other opportunities that are available without a full four-year degree, for example, with a one or two-year program, or with specific skill building and apprenticeships, we’re seeing those other routes really start to catch up to the value of a degree. And once again, I really think universities are in a more precarious position than they realize. On the one hand, they’re under pressure from the fact that there are these alternative options, and I think that we as a society are seeing the debt problems of students in my generation and Gen Z and responding to that by looking for alternatives.

Stepman:
They’re also under pressure from online developments and from people being able to take course by course online instruction towards a degree, and then on you layer on top of that this, the fact that they’re deeply unpopular with half of the country and the fact that they fail to be able to even give that very basic open inquiry space, right? We thought of universities as marketplaces for ideas, they really don’t seem to be that anymore, and I think they should really watch out because I think the public is slowly starting to conclude that they’re not worth the enormous investment from taxpayers anymore. If they fail to provide a space for open inquiry, which is sort of the basic thing that they should do as universities, and they’re charging these astronomical prices that are propped up by government involvement … And that’s why those prices are so high, because the government keeps making more “free money” available for folks to go to universities to get degrees.

Stepman:
I think all of those forces in play really add up to a precarious position for universities, which is why they really need to pay attention when increasing numbers of parents are looking at these universities and saying, “Is it worth it?” Looking at the protests on campus, looking at the inability of anyone from moderate to the right side of the spectrum to speak without being interrupted or perhaps without violence on campus, these are all things that are factoring into the opinion that Americans are forming about universities, and they very well may conclude that they’re not worth the investment.

Hallberg:
And unlike the way that people typically get loans is, whoever is giving you the loan, you want to make sure that they can pay you back, it seems that in this area the government is giving loans out to any person who wants to get whatever degree that they want at whatever university, even if that’s not a degree that’s going to help them in the future. So think of women’s studies courses or women’s studies degrees, sure there is a subset of individuals that can find a job, but when you think about in the long run how many people can really work in those issue areas? Do you think that that’s something else that should be included? That in order to get a loan from the government, you have to put, make sure that the degree that you’re getting are your best effort to make sure that this is a degree that you can finish and then make enough money to be able to pay off the loan?

Stepman:
So my worry is that the government has, especially the federal government, has a terrible track record of being able to assess value, right? So that’s what we’ve seen Republicans attempt to do on the Hill, is to make a matrix for what degrees at what institutions are worth what investment, and the problem is the government is really terrible at doing that. They tried it with K-12, with No Child Left Behind, to assess the value of how, what schools were adding value to students and what schools weren’t, and they did a really terrible job there and I don’t see that they’re going to do any better with universities.

Stepman:
I think that the better solution is for the government to get out of the student loan business. The reason that any 18-year-old can walk in anywhere in the country, sign a piece of paper, and get hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans, at pretty high rates I would add, from the federal government, that, that’s a system that just couldn’t exist in a private loan market, right? If you were to walk into Wells Fargo and say, “I want to study women’s studies at Cornell, and to do that I need about $200,000. But I’ll pay you back after I get a women’s studies degree in Cornell,” Wells Fargo is going to look at that application and they’re going to say, “How is this degree and going to help you pay me back my $200,000 plus interest?” That’s not how the government looks at it, they don’t ask about, what degree, they don’t assess value in the more effective way that a bank would do it. They just put a check, a blank check, in front of an 18-year-old and say, “Go for it.”

Stepman:
And that really has been a pernicious influence on the university system, in my view, it’s led to really, really high loans for my generation, your generation, and then the folks who came after us. And it’s also been a huge boon to the universities at expense of the taxpayer, right, universities have been able to charge these extraordinarily high prices for a product that the market doesn’t support the value being there. They’ve been able to do that because Americans are investing through the government in this, and if we didn’t have tax payer investment in this whole kind of scheme, then universities would not be able to charge the $50,000 a year that they’re able to charge.

Stepman:
One good way to see that there is no actual market pressure on university costs is the fact that almost all universities, regardless of where they’re ranked, for example, on on the U.S. World News Report, they charge basically the same tuition, they’re very, very close. There’s a difference between public universities and private universities, but basically all private universities charge roughly the same tuition amount, whether they’re ranked number one or whether they’re ranked number 556. And that’s just a really clear signal that that’s not a market, right? A degree from a university that’s at the very end of the the U.S. World News Report, it’s not worth the same as a degree from Harvard, but they’re charging the same price, which should make us think, “Hmm, this isn’t really a market.” This is basically a bubble that the taxpayer has financed to benefit universities, and it’s ended up benefiting only universities because students are the ones at the end of the day who gets stuck with a bill.

Hallberg:
And this is final question for you, and going back to something you talked about earlier. And that is the individuals who are looking at skills based training, or they think more about, “What do I want to do, and how do I get certified to be able to do that?” Sometimes it’s a degree, sometimes it’s not, sometimes people are self-made entrepreneurs and just learn as they go. Do you find that young people, as they’re seeing the costs of college and they’re seeing the social justice warrior movement on college campuses, that there is a trend to not go to college? I know in my generation, it was you go to college and figure out what you want to do. Do you see more young people say, “I’m going to figure out what I want to do and figure out how to get there, which may not meet mean a degree.”?

Stepman:
I definitely think in the last two years we’re seeing a real cultural shift on this, and we’re seeing it impact university tuition, which, I mentioned, for more than two decades university tuition has been skyrocketing well above inflation. We’re actually seeing that level off just in the last couple of years, and I think that reflects the cost benefit analysis that’s changing for both families and students when they’re looking at universities, looking at the cost, looking at the loans they’re going to have to take out. I think folks now are much more aware in a way that … When you and I were looking at college, I think the advice was exactly what you said, right? It was, “Go to the best school that will have you. Don’t worry about those loans, you’ll pay them off with a fabulous job that you’re going to get after college because you went to college.” That’s no longer the message.

Stepman:
I think folks, especially parents, are much more aware of the burden that high debt can bring for decades after students graduate, and I think they’re looking at all of these factors. I mean, we saw large enrollment drops, for example, in Mizzou University under, after those huge protests a couple years ago on the college campuses, we actually saw a drop-off of enrollment. And I think parents are looking at this and they’re looking at the sticker cost, and they’re saying, “If these are in fact not a place where ideas can be shared, if they’re not respecting the first amendment, if they really are sort of left-wing activists training camps, is that worth the sticker price?” It’s not clear to a lot of parents that it is.

Stepman:
And I think we’re finally seeing with that tuition level-off, that even with all the free money the government is offering parents are more aware of how that’s going to burden their student going forward, and they’re exercising a little bit more caution as to what university they’re sending their kids to, and then whether or not their kids really need to go to university in order to, to have a successful career. And as you mentioned, there are so many other options, and I think Americans are becoming more culturally aware of those options much more than they were, say 5 or 10 years ago.

Hallberg:
And that’s why this policy study is so important, the work that you do as a whole looking at these issues. Because the reality is is that higher education, it’s usually touches all of us either if we personally go or choose not to go, but also people who are listening who have kids and grandkids, and these are important conversations to have with them because the decision you, a young person makes in this can change a trajectory of their career and their financial status.

Hallberg:
So Inez, thank you for this work, I’m excited to to read it. It’s online, people should go iwf.org. But thank you so much for joining us today.

Stepman:
Thanks so much for having me, Beverly.

Hallberg:
And thank you all for joining us. Again, do go to iwf.org to read this policy paper, but also the other issues related to education. I also wanted to let you know of a great podcast you should subscribe to in addition to She Thinks, it’s called Problematic Women. And it’s hosted by Kelsey Bolar and Lauren Evans, where they both sort through the news to bring stories and interviews that are of particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women, that is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called “Feminist Left”. Every Thursday, hear them talk about everything from pop culture to policy and politics, by searching for Problematic Women wherever you get your podcasts.

Hallberg:
Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or review on iTunes, it does help, and do share this episode so that your friends know where they can find more She Thinks episodes. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.