New College Cry: Affordability
Reader Comments
Universities have lost their mission
It should be no surprise to anyone that Universities have become unaffordable. I graduated from Harvard and quite a few of my classmates are Professors, and a few head up major departments in some of the most prestigious Universities in the US. Out of curiosity, I looked up several in the course outlines to see what they actually did.
They all have tenure, and, at most, they only teach a few hours a day, not even every day. Of course they say Harvard is a research University, and judging by course loads is not useful. So, I looked up their production of books, articles, and other scholarly materials. In the few cases I did look at, their production was very limited, typically in twenty years, one or two books and a handful of articles, mostly using the text from the books. Now. these people have high salaries, good fringe benefits, and worldwide travel and perks.
It is astonishing to see a list of the total compensation for the University of California. There is no Professor who makes less than $200,000 a year and quite a few make $999,999 -- I suppose to avoid the criticism that they make a million dollars a year. I found this information on SFgate.com
We also pay a heavy burden in taxes. There are very large government grants given to study abstruse and petty things which cannot benefit anyone. And, it seems that in the case of "global warming" the University reseachers ballooned a simple concept into a global CO2 and energy reduction movement which threatens to bring industry to its knees. President-elect Obama has promised to put severe controls on CO2 emissions which directly impact energy use which can only be accomplished by shutting down a large number of plants and causing a very severe recession. And after taxpayers funded studies like these, to the tune of forty billion dollars, there is still not one shred of evidence that CO2 controls the climate. The cost of this will run into trillions of dollars.
But, the most foolish University programs are the politically correct faculty positions and large departments for black, hispanic, and women's programs. These departments produce political activists who have been taught to believe that all societies are equally talented, and that the works associated with their groups are discriminated against. Whenever I got a résumé from someone who had wasted his University education in a program like this, it went straight into the wastebasket.
Of course, Universities like Harvard seek color of skin diversity, and provide substantial scolarships to minority students. This is problematic because it increases the burdens on non-minority students, because this subsidy has to come from somewhere. Actually, Harvard and other prestige Universities have enormous endowments, and could actually use the endowment funds to subsidize scholarships, and they do. But, tuitions rise inexorably anyway.
