This latest post has been inspired by this article: http://www.komonews.com/news/38258749.html
Time and time again over the last few months I've been hearing about, reading about, watching and discussing the economic state that our country is in (or for that matter, the world). I realize that most everyone in our nation is suffering, by varying degrees, because richer, more powerful people were making unsafe financial bets due to greed. In the end, not many of these people received any kind of punishment; just a harsh tongue-lashing and making them promise not to do it again (sort of). Of course, the richest people in this country who have not really been horribly affected by our current economy bother me somewhat; but not as much as I'm bothered by those working in public arenas who, rather than being responsible civil servants, decide to make more vulnerable people pay the increasing debt.
Now, I understand that we live in a capitalist society (sort of) and that with this mentality/social structure comes the idea that if one isn't rich, it's only his/her own fault; that if one has money s/he is in no way obligated to pay for others. Point taken, understood, okay. What I don't understand is taking "capitalism" to the extreme. True, if one is able to work hard yet isn't willing to do so, then one doesn't deserve anything s/he wants. But financially punishing those who have worked hard and are continuing to work hard is beyond my understanding.
I don't understand how public universities can increase tuition rates when they can afford to pay their professors (tenured and untenured) a ridiculous salary (http://lbloom.net/uw07.html). When one clicks on the link to the left, one may think "wow, they sure do make a lot of money". What one may not know is that many of the professors' salaries are actually two to three times what is reported on the list. And that's because bonuses, etc. don't have to be reported. What we see on this list is the base salary (oh, yes, to reiterate, they get paid much, much more than what is listed here). Granted, these professors may be brilliant and well worth the money because of their connections and the prestige, recognition and money they can bring to the university. But if they can bring in so much money, why is government going to increase tuition?
My solution to this problem would be that everyone in a government office and/or works in the public sector who makes two and a half times the median income of the state should take a 0.025% pay cut. Those who make three times the median income should take a 0.05% pay cut and so on and so forth. A salary cap is not enough. If they cut even just this tiny bit from their salaries (and, believe me, they pay more for their nannies and housekeepers), they wouldn't have to raise tuition rates, our roads could be maintained as they should be, public health agencies wouldn't need to be suffering, etc.
My goal in writing this is not just to complain. My hope is that we (especially me) can all be motivated to be involved in what's going on in our communities, cities, counties, states, and our nation and do something to fix problems we encounter.
Universities are very liberal and as liberal institutions they want plenty of money to carry out their liberal agendas. One of the high priority items on this agenda is wealth re-distribution. Universities want to be able to choose which of societies "victims" get to go to school very cheaply. This of course means that they charge the people they have determined to be non-victims as much tuition as they can possibly barely pay so that they have plenty of money that can be re-distributed to "victims".
It really does not matter how much money the State provides a University. It could be enough to educated every kid for free. The University knows that there are parents and kids that are desperate for a college education and willing to pay dearly for it. And the University uses this knowledge and deperation to wring as much money as possible out of these people. and the tuition fees move upwards independently from the funding provided by taxpayers through the state. Universities raise tuition not because they need to but because they can.
Just consider it a tax. You are paying for society's many social injustices. Don't let it bother you that these University Administrators were never elected to play this role and were not given a mandate to redistribute your wealth. It is just one of the benefits of being a liberal.
The ever-increasing tuition burden in both public and> private universities has nothing to do with whether or not a college is considered "liberal" or "conservative." Even the tuitions at the Top 10 Most Politically Conservative Colleges seem to be experiencing the same sort of tuition increases as their more liberal sister-institutions.
The reason that tuition are increasing (IMHO), is that our university systems tend to be judged (fairly or not) on the quality of the research and publications produced by the faculty, who are in turn rewarded and published accordingly. In my opinion, many universities seem to see the education of undergraduates more as a line of revenue than as the real goal of their institution.
On a side note, do you know WHY so many universities tend to lean left, rather than right? I always find it interesting when people get into the whole claptrap of "who's smarter, conservatives or liberals?" But, the REAL reason that our universities tend to be liberal goes all the way back to the Vietnam War. One of the ways you could get a deferment from the draft was to enroll in college, and the longer you stayed in the longer you were "safe." So, and obvious choice for the left-leaning opponents of the war--the conventional wisdom being that by-and-large, conservatives tend to be more hawkish on the subject--was to stay in school. That shifted the demographics of students heavily to the left, and since university professors for all practical purposes ONLY come from the population of university graduates, within one generation of new professorships the prevalence of left-leaning professors became the status quo.
TTFN,
Blackout
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A question of love.
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Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.
The things you write baffle me
Now, I understand that we live in a capitalist society
there you go