I believe you an I are speaking on two different plains. The philosophy on campus is the philosophy of most under 35. Where did that philosophy come from? Answer: our schools and universities. So when you speak of the "public" remember the public is not homogenous, both demographic and geographic. But also the greatest distinction between one group and the other is on our university campuses.
The public opinion has very little impact, if any, as to what is taught. Why do you see what you see happening today on our school campuses. Anyone speaking against illegal immigration is attacked both physically and philosophically. We don't have must input at all. Sure maybe at a grade school level, but even there it is limited. When you get to the university level it's basically 'you don't like what we are teaching or doing, then get out'. It's that black and white. And don't think that funding will hold sway over this philosophy. People holding the purse strings are getting exactly what they want. Ask George Soros why his organization ANSWER recruits from the university campuses.

Exactly. And the people who hold the purse strings are those who pay for college, or to be more precise, the parents of students who can afford to send their children to university. Without people who choose a university and pay for it, there is no university. Universities cannot exist on patronage alone.

Universities exist that will teach students of particular religious persuasions and place everything they teach in the context of those beliefs. But the most respected universities are those with the most universal point of view. This means especially science. Science pays and the best universities will provide the best education in science and technology, else they will not get students from parents who are willing to pay for the best.

Somewhere this need for intellectual respectability is being shortchanged, but blaming some elitest intellectual cabal in the universities is a little like blaming the victim. Except there isn't enough intellectual life left in many universities to support any intellectual elite.

The tuition is a small pittance of what it cost to run a university or college. But as I said, we are approaching this from completely different plains, or is it planes? I could never spell very well.