The Center for Intellectual Freedom is a comically-named educational institution established by Iowa's conservative legislature to counter the liberal indoctrination of traditional education. Few students have availed themselves of its "top-tier scholarship," though, though, leaving commissars with a numbers problem. A solution is at hand: force University of Iowa students to take classes there if they want to graduate.
Republican lawmakers added a provision to a massive budget bill during a 35-hour legislative session requiring University of Iowa students to complete at least six credit hours from the center to earn an undergraduate degree. The bill now heads to Gov. Kim Reynolds' desk.
The center opened in the spring semester, having been allocated $1m in funding with millions more to come, but enrollment is "dismal". A report impressed upon its readers the need to require students to take the courses if they are to bother. The bill doesn't become law until Gov. Kim Reynolds signs it; she may also veto it or use a line-item veto to strip the requirement.
The center launched two one-credit hour classes in late March. Numbers from the University's website show one class has just 8 of 32 seats filled, and the other has 11 of 32 seats filled. Ben Murrey of the nonprofit research group Common Sense Institute, which the center hired to analyze demand and student interest, said he is not surprised by the low turnout. … "it's remarkable that they got really any enrollment at all."
Democrats in Iowa say its a waste of money.
"We saw that no students really wanted to participate in that program, but this legislation will require families who are paying for college education for their kids, which is not cheap, that they would be forced to take these freedom classes," Sen. Janet Petersen told the ABC news affiliate. "Six hours at the University of Iowa and that comes straight out of student and parent's checkbooks."
Maybe they should take up one Iowa Congresswoman's suggestion of renaming the center for slain conservative pundit Charlie Kirk, who frequently boasted that he lacked a degree and described higher education as a scam: "do anything but go to college."
