U of M’s general college to close next year

“The University began as a land-grant university and it shouldn’t be turned into an elitist club!” declared teaching assistant, union organizer and graduate student Issac Komola at a recent rally supporting University of Minnesota’s General College (GC).

For 63 years, the semi-autonomous General College specialized in serving “nontraditional” students—largely poor, minority, older or immigrant students, many the first in their families to go to college. The college’s intensive remedial courses, small classes and creative teaching methods are designed to help students climb out of a disadvantaged background.

Last month, however, University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks proposed sweeping changes intended to make the university into a top-flight research institution, which would reduce the General College to a smaller department. Since then the university has seen numerous protests, sit-ins, arrests and angry debates. None of that, however, could dissuage the upper brass, on Friday, June 10th, it was announced that the U of M’s board of regents voted by a count of 11 to 1 to close the general college.

One argument for eliminating the college, the administration said, was the changing demographics of higher education—colleges are no longer the institutions for the white and wealthy they were when the GC was formed in 1932. Even today, however, when people of color are 28 percent of the nation, students of color make up 8 percent of the U of M but 46 percent of the GC. Students with family incomes of $30,000 or less are 26 percent of the GC and just 10 percent of the rest of the U of M.

Bruinink’s stated goal is to “raise the national ranking” of the U of M to “make the University of Minnesota one of the top three research institutions in the world.” Students have been excluded from participating in Bruinink’s “strategic positioning” sessions, and he has refused to meet with them.

Echoing rhetoric similar to other “privatization” and “free market” arguments, one focus of the corporate-funded research is the growing biotech industry pursued by such transnationals as Minnesota agriculture giant Cargill. Biotech research into genetically-engineered plants are a major concern for conservationists and anti-globalization activists, as well as Native American tribes—who are concerned about how such research impacts indigenous crops such as wild rice in northern Minnesota. Longtime corporate funders at the U of M also include weapons’ manufacturers.

“The University has never been just for honor-roll and rich kids. Let’s not make it one now,” Lena Gardner, an African-American liberal arts senior, said. “The U is starting to model corporate structures as an institution. That’s problematic, because it’s supposed to be educating people—not making profit.”

Gardner’s concern represented the 250 students, faculty, community activists, graduates and union-members in a lively speak-out on the MacNamara Alumni Center plaza a few weeks ago. The mostly young crowd carried Heart of the Beast Theatre’s colorful puppets and many gold T-shirts proclaiming “Support General College,” and began the chant of Mexico’s Zapatistas, “Nothing about us, without us!”