The College of Education and Human Services celebrated its 40th annual Harry M. Sparks Distinguished Lecture Series with a speech on the benefits, challenges and resilience of higher education.
The speaker was Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education President Aaron Thompson. A first-generation high school student and the first African American and native Kentuckian to hold the council’s presidential title, Thompson took to the podium at Alexander Hall to give his lecture titled “Defending the Value of Higher Education.”
Thompson’s lecture started by describing the history and recent distrust of higher education. Thompson provided statistics showing a 21% decline in the public’s positive opinion of higher education in a 10 year period, from 57% in 2015 to 36% in 2025.
Thompson said some narratives in media and public opinion have shaped this public distrust. Among these narratives was the rising cost of college and student debt, confusion on the usefulness of certain degrees and doubt about the return of investment in higher education. Thompson acknowledged the culpability of higher education in some of these problems, including lack of transparency in the cost of education and failure of colleges to connect to employers.
He also said there’s concerns of political partisanship and ideological indoctrination in college campuses. Thompson said as faculty he always challenged students to think critically, regardless of political opinion.
“I tell people, I’m not even politically correct, I surely don’t want you to be, but I want you to be correct,” Thompson said. “I want you to know facts.”
Thompson said he defends the role of diversity, equity and inclusion in college campuses. Thompson said that regardless of race, if a student needs extra help to get where they need to go, he will give it to them. Thompson explains that diversity, equity and inclusion are not about preferential treatment, but helping students succeed.
Thompson said these negative attitudes towards higher education have led to political legislation which freezes funding, erodes Title IX protections for LGBTQ students and negatively affects scholarships and loan forgiveness programs. This legislation adds further confusion for potential students and discourages enrollment.
Thompson said Murray State is one of the leading institutions for student outcomes in Kentucky, complementing the institution for spending more from its budget to encourage student success than most federal and student aid put together.
With this “existential threat” to higher education, Thompson quoted former Harvard President Lawrence Bacow in asking, “what does higher education really contribute to the national life?” To answer this, Thompson pulled a number of statistics on the benefits of education on the individual and national level.
According to the statistics Thompson cited, he said college graduates will make twice the income over the course of their career compared to high school grads. Thompson also said those with a bachelor’s degree have half the employment rate of high school graduates and are more likely to volunteer in their communities. He said higher education has been shown to coincide with a higher quality of life and greater citizen engagement.
Thompson said the Kentucky legislature spends 10% of its general fund on education and receives four times that in tax revenue from college graduates. In local communities, the effect is even greater at 17 times the revenue.
“For every dollar the state spends on higher education, it generates $17 for local restaurants, bars and other businesses,” Thompson said.
On the topic of student loan debt, Thompson said the amount of debt owed by college students in Kentucky has gone down, and the number of students graduating with debt has also gone down. He said more Kentucky students are graduating without debt than with, according to the Council of Postsecondary Education’s survey.
Thompson said the need for postsecondary education is growing in the Kentucky job market. Thompson said by 2031, 63% of Kentucky jobs will require some level of postsecondary education, and the need for college credentials will grow as AI replaces jobs.
Thompson then said universities should respond to the pessimism towards higher education. Among his suggestions for how universities should do this, is to forcefully affirm what universities do and what they contribute to society, and to mobilize faculty and students to testify about the value of higher education. He also said universities must also extend their reach by serving nontraditional students and featuring diverse voices in the student body, and must strengthen their relationship to the local communities in the towns they are based in.
“People ask me all the time, what is your greatest accomplishment?” Thompson said. “It’s my baccalaureate degree, it changed my life, it changed the lives of my children … That baccalaureate degree changed my trajectory and the generations after me.”
Thompson ended his lecture with an address to the audience of University faculty, asking them to think about their core values, based on facts and not opinion, and to live out a value proposition based not on money. He asked them to be a part of something greater than what they are.
