There’s a reason that U.S. college tuition is so expensive: to control the population!

That’s not a fringe opinion. In fact, I’m summarizing Ronald Regan’s strategy for controlling college student protests during the 1960’s.

Let’s start with a July 1969 FBI memo from J. Edgar Hoover’s third in command, Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, to his second in command Clyde Tolson:

“Mr. [Herbert] Ellingwood [Governor Ronald Reagan’s Legal Affairs Secretary] stated that Governor Reagan is dedicated to the destruction of disruptive elements on California college campuses. The state government will attack these groups through several methods.”

Reagan ran for Governor of California in 1966 and a core theme of his first gubernatorial campaign was resentment toward California’s public colleges, in particular UC Berkeley.

In his Cow Palace speech, May 12, 1966, Reagan said:

“this [dance on the Berkeley campus] has been allowed to go on in the name of academic freedom. What in heaven’s name does ‘academic freedom’ have to do with rioting, with anarchy, with attempts to destroy the primary purpose of the University which is to educate our young people?“

In the same speech, Reagan added that,

“freedom of speech, when some Americans are fighting and dying for their country, must stop short of lending comfort and aid to the enemy.”

Reagan promised that, if elected to Governor of California, he would appoint John McCone, the former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, to head a commission to investigate why “the campus has become a rallying point for Communism and a center of sexual misconduct.” He further vowed to implement a “code of conduct that would force [faculty] to serve as examples of good behavior and decency.”

Reagan won the election in 1966 by just under a million votes and immediately gunned for the University of California.

Reagan immediately introduced tuition charges as part of his strategy to control the college unrest. In a press conference on January 10, 1967, Reagan commented:

“[Tuition] might affect those who are there really not to study but to agitate, it might make them think twice about paying a fee for the privilege of carrying a picket sign.”

Fun fact: Before Reagan became governor of California, tuition was free for California residents.

A few days later, on January 17, 1967, Reagan pushed to cut state funding for California’s public colleges. He said, the state simply needed to save money to cover the funding shortfall and recommended that California public colleges charge residents tuition for the first time:

“So there is the problem we just simply have a shortage of dollars. It is hard to believe there is no leeway for cost cutting in the University program. Right at the moment I’m tempted to suggest a cut in the University’s approximately $700,000-a-year public relations budget since it would seem a good share of it is being spent publicizing me.

But let me make it plain; I don’t pretend the economies will be easy for any of us. Some will we will find unneeded fat that can be whittled away without scratching a single muscle [fibre], but like any family faced with this problem, we will all have to give up some things we would like. This is a temporary thing. If professors take on an added work load, this isn’t a permanent change in policy. I share their hopes for continued progress in educational standards and achievement, but I ask them now to share in the burden with the rest of us until we can put our house in order.

This brings me to the furor over our suggestion that among the several possibilities for minimizing the effect of budget costs is tuition.

This suggestion resulted in the almost hysterical charge that this would deny educational opportunities to those of the most moderate means. This is obviously untrue for two reasons:

– First, we made it plain that tuition must be accompanied by adequate loans to be paid back after graduation and that scholarships should be available to provide that no deserving students be denied educations due to lack of funds.

More important is the false impression given that enrollment in the University is now in some way based on the ability to pay. This is not true.“

As we all know now, this was not a “temporary thing”.

A month later, at a press conference in Sacramento on Feb. 28, 1967, Reagan told a crowd that:

“taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing intellectual curiosity.” 

Reagan elaborated on his quote above regarding taxpayers “subsidizing intellectual curiosity” when he made the following statement to the Sacramento Bee on October 26, 1969:

“There are too many in the academic community who consciously, or unconsciously, bare their contempt for the ordinary citizen who may not have had the benefit of a college education, but who is sharing a very heavy tax burden, some of which goes to pay the cost of professors’ salaries and administrators’ expense accounts.

The same taxpayer … is asking why violence and disruption are openly encouraged, or even tolerated, on the campus he finances — in the name of academic freedom…. He is wondering … why some instructors are able to use the classrooms to indoctrinate and propagandize his children against the traditional values of a free society in this country.“

Returning to the topic of student unrest, Reagan gave a chilling response to the trouble at the Santa bara campus as reported in the Berkley Daily Gazette on April 9, 1970. Reagan remarked:

“If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.”

Reagan later claimed that is was merely a slip of the tongue, but we know better.

And so in keeping with the American tradition of worshipping sociopaths, we elected him President twice! 🙂

Of course, Reagan was not alone is his quest to send the population back to their place of political apathy and passivity. Please read the following articles for a more in depth explanation:

Democracy and Propaganda: A Timeline of Thoughts from Responsible Men

The Powell Memo – Full Transcript

Thanks for reading,

Notes:

Ronald Reagan and Student Unrest in California, 1966-1970: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3640829#

https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-the-rise-of-student-loan-debt-in-america/