State auditor Shad White was a political appointee by Gov. Phil Bryant in 2018, then was elected to the post in 2019. He is running for reelection this year, but you get the impression that his ultimate goal lies beyond the auditor’s office.

In state government, some people want the position. The best people want the job. White is clearly the former.

Like most state auditors, White leaves the actual auditing to his staff, which leaves plenty of  free time on his hands, most of which he uses to ingratiate himself with the state’s conservative voting base.

One of the ways he does this is by preparing “reports” on issues that are only vaguely-related to the auditor’s position but are red meat for conservative voters. First was a report on K-12 public school funding, which predictably targeted money spent on administration, followed by a study on “fatherlessness,” in which he offered just one recommendation: increasing participation in Junior ROTC programs. He did not say how this would be achieved. Perhaps by a draft.

The most blatantly political of his reports came out last week and targeted college liberal arts programs offered by public universities.

His argument: If someone wants to major in some of these liberal arts fields, fine. Just don’t ask taxpayers to pay for it. White asserts that the state should fund only those fields of study that have the best impact on the state economy because they generally produce higher-income jobs. The real target, though, is that subjects like African-American studies or gender studies are forms of “radical liberal indoctrination, “according to the white male auditor.

Broadly speaking, White maintains that a liberal arts education is a waste of the student’s time and taxpayer funds.

The idea that a student should choose his field of study based on what the government believes to be best for the state economy has a definite Stalinist vibe about it.

What’s more, White is being pretty hypocritical on this point. His undergraduate degree at Ole Miss was in political science. I don’t know about you, but I’m routinely in need of a political scientist’s services and am not reluctant to pay them handsomely for their work.

As far as the state “paying for” the programs that White oddly despises, it’s not much of an argument, at least not in the past 20 years. Twenty years ago, the state paid for two-thirds of a student’s tuition. Today, the state provides about 25 percent. Let’s face it: the taxpayer isn’t paying very much for any field of study.

White attained his undergraduate degree at Ole Miss, was a Rhodes Scholar and earned his law degree from Harvard. I attained my associate’s degree from Itawamba Junior College (aka Harvard on the ‘Bigbee) and my bachelor’s degree at Mississippi State. It’s great fun for someone with my credentials to be able to effectively punch down on someone with White’s credentials. Of course, White makes it easier than it should be.

But the best rebuttal to White’s assertions was made by former Mississippi University for Women President Jim Borsig at a Columbus Rotary meeting in April 2014.

“I don’t think there is any time any more important than now for a high-quality liberal arts education,” Borsig said. “Every one of our graduates completes the same core of the liberal arts… You want our students to be able to speak. You want our students to be able to write. You want them to be able to focus on critical thinking. You want them to be able to work in groups. You want them to be able to lead a community in a civil manner. Those are the things that happen in a liberal arts education… I think that I could make the argument that in this day and age where we tend to have pretty shrill arguments about things, that being able to have more well-educated graduates who can lead civic clubs, lead other organizations, lead community kinds of activities all really helps us move this region, any region in the country, forward.”

White sees our kids as little more than workers on behalf of the state economy. Borsig sees our kids are tomorrow’s leaders.

Borsig’s argument is clearly superior, don’t you think?

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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