Ideological Shift: “Starving the Beast”

The term starving the beast was coined to describe a political strategy to “limit government spending by cutting taxes thus forcing the government to reduce spending.”

In the important documentary Starving the Beast, directed by Steve Mims, a history of the recent ideological shift to limit funding to public universities is examined. There’s a political agenda behind this effort to run schools for profit and rate teachers on the amount of money they bring into their university. The latter reform was utilized at Texas A&M and called the “red and black report.”

Other schools of higher learning that appear in Starving the Beast include University of Texas, as well as universities in Louisiana, North Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The documentary has previously been making the rounds at film festivals and offers both conservative and liberal points of view to the academic consequences.

“Starving the Beast” is currently playing in an exclusive engagement at the downtown Sundance Cinemas Houston.

by Michael Bergeron