Most Public Colleges Face Budget Cut Threats in 2011

Just a day or two ago I read that the highest-paid state employee in my state is a university football coach, and though I'm *not* anti-sport, herein lies, I suspect, a major problem in funding, since athletic expenses go far beyond a coach's/athletic director's salary.

For a consistently leading team, sinking boatloads of money into sports, particularly football, can make a lot of financial sense when the school's sports status draws heavy contributions, so long as most of those funds can be used for purposes other than just sports. Even then, there's something seriously amiss when a school has full scholarships for every single player but in some other department doesn't have even a single *partial* one. Both these sometimes happen.

Though Texas has some world-class universities and a few high schools second to none, overall, the educational level is surprisingly low. But try telling Texans to devote more money to actual classroom education instead of fancy football stadiums and you immediately hit a brick wall, in many cases. Decades ago, when I was in high school, my tiny, rural district voted on a bond issue to build a new school. There wasn't enough money to build a football stadium -- but 40% -- 40%! -- of the bond money was spent to build a basketball gymnasium. Meanwhile, we had no air-conditioning and limited academic offerings. In fact, we had exactly zero foreign languages, and only two sciences, one year of chemistry and two of biology (the state minimum at the time; everything we had, academically, was state minimum).

That's crazy.

Another factor is too many administrators who are too highly paid. How many chief's do we need??? Look at many universities' legions of VP's, Ass't. VP's, etc. My undergraduate university made two really smart moves when I was there. Though the economy was sound, when the chancellor, president, and several VP's left at the end of the same year, the regents combined the chancellor and president's position and combined some of the VP ones, eliminating several jobs -- and saving a lot of $. And they earmarked every last cent for front-line education -- classroom supplies, library books, etc.

BTW, I'm a former university instructor with years experience, and I love teaching. It runs in my family: my Mother is a retired teacher, and my Sister and a cousin are both still teaching, all in the public schools. I'm hardly anti-education.

As a closing note, to the two people (so far) who have made snide remarks about "liberal professors," two points: a great many professors aren't liberal by *any* measure; both liberals and conservatives can be forward-looking without being loony tunes (or, I suspect, you meant "socialist" or "communist"); further, to the person who added brick-and-mortar buildings are no longer needed because of the Internet -- you can largely thank those "commie" professors for that. Where's Silicon Valley, for instance? -- Uh-huh -- in liberal country. EDUCATION, not politics, please!

MekhongKurt 7:40AM August 10, 2010