This past summer, Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, announced a draconian plan to slash appropriations for the university system by 41 percent. Defending the decision, he repeated a phrase that increasingly accompanies budget cuts: that the university couldn’t continue being “all things for all people.” Dunleavy, who insisted that the state’s deficit be closed without raising taxes, argued that Alaska must “turn the university into a smaller, leaner, but still very positive, productive university in the Northern Hemisphere.”
Pete Buttigieg has made a similar notion the center of his opposition to universal free college in the 2020 Democratic primary. “Americans who have a college degree earn more than Americans who don’t,” Buttigieg said. “As a progressive, I have a hard time getting my head around the idea of a majority who earn less because they didn’t go to college subsidizing a minority who earn more because they did.” Buttigieg has continued to hammer the point that universality equals upward redistribution. Lis Smith, a senior adviser for his campaign, tweeted, “If you think that a worker who didn’t go to college should pay for college for a CEO’s kid, then @PeteButtigieg isn’t your candidate.”