[asabjorn]

> You can't just point at "the government is funding this therefore this is the government". The actual influence the government exerts on an entity compared to all the other influences on that entity is a huge factor here.

Public universities and K-12 are actually owned by state governments, and they are subject to FOIA and constitutional constraints like all government institutions. For instance, they are not supposed to push a state religion.

> The influence has to be "large", for some sensible definition of large. That definition should probably compare the influence with other sources of influence somehow.

So are you arguing that meritocratic considerations should be secondary to other considerations decided with political power?