The Atlantic, September 2, 2016: The Politics of Higher Education

“He devotes significant time in the film to academics who worry that state divestment in higher education will give private funders with political motivations too much power over what and how students learn. Mims worries, too, that poor but brilliant students will lose what access they’ve gained to top schools if some of the policies touted by conservatives— income-based repayment of student loans, for instance, or the widespread accreditation of non-traditional classes offered by businesses and even churches—become reality, because he fears investors won’t see such students as smart investments. But he also devotes time to reformers like Frederick Hess, the director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, who says in the documentary, ‘If somebody wants to write about sexually dystopian themes in 14th-century epic poetry, I think that’s fine. I have no earthly idea why taxpayers are supposed to subsidize this.’”