Those overhauling higher education in Utah trumpet efficiency as a value above all else. So why is the state squandering so much young talent whose primary and secondary education it has fully funded?
I am the proud parent of a successful high school student graduating this month. Our daughter was born here and attended Salt Lake public schools her whole life. Today, she’s the kind of kid who has options for college — great grades in advanced courses, music and activities, work experience, community engagement. Until recently, she and her large group of similarly successful friends often talked of attending the University of Utah together. Many of these kids have been in school together since kindergarten. I can see why they’d want to stay that way, and the state would be lucky to have them.
As a parent and professor — I’ve taught at the University of Utah for 20 years — I know these kids. I know the kind of students they’ll become. Today they’re the science and math kids, art and music kids, triathletes and gamers — tomorrow they’re inventors, engineers, artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, parents and community leaders. Utah universities and colleges know this, too, and have been trying hard to recruit them. They’ve done outreach at their high schools, invited them to campus, hosted summer programs and offered generous scholarships. I’m delighted when these efforts work, and I love seeing the kids I’ve watched grow up as students in our classes.
Instead, my daughter and most of her friends are leaving Utah.
Who could blame them? These great kids are queer, or their close friends are. They vibrantly represent all the letters of the LGBTQ+ alphabet, and Utah has done everything in its power to let them know they are not welcome here. In the past year alone: The flags we used to communicate that they were welcome and valued — banned. Their affinity groups and centers — gone. Their sports, dorms, bathrooms, health care — gone, threatened, diminished.
Maybe if the U. had stood up for our students even a little — prioritized bathroom access rather than taking what the Daily Utah Chronicle called a “slow and cautious approach;” worked to keep affinity centers open; touted creativity in ensuring sports, dorms, locker rooms for all — we’d be welcoming more of these kids in the fall. Maybe if instead of warning faculty to be quiescent, our leadership had actually led in the mold of Salt Lake City with its new flags or even made gestures like wearing and displaying its own U-branded rainbows not shaped like rectangles — these talented high school seniors would believe we have their backs.
Instead, many of these kids have turned down their scholarships from Utah schools. They’re taking the scholarships other states and even countries are offering and going to Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado — some to the east coast, at least three to Canada.
As a parent, I’m excited for them and wish them great adventures. As a professor, I can’t help but feel the loss.
I’d like to ask the education-is-a-business set: How is that a good return on investment? These kids are already highly skilled and they haven’t even started college. How is it efficient to educate them this far on the state’s dime and then drive them away? But maybe that’s the point — state policies have been extremely efficient at bringing about exactly this outcome. For many of our state’s leaders, the problem isn’t that these kids are leaving, it’s that they were ever here at all.
(Anne Jamison) Anne Jamison is an English professor at the University of Utah.
Anne Jamison has been teaching, raising kids and doing outreach with teens in Salt Lake City since 2004. She is an English professor at the University of Utah but her opinions do not reflect those of her employer. Obviously.
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