HELP EDUCATION: CUT UNIVERSITY FUNDING

Julianne Malveaux was discussion investing in education in the United States on Chris Hayes show UP (MSNBC) this morning. I would like to add to that discussion because “investing in education” has gone astray. The thinking of people who are responsible for investing in education have been corrupted by a two step maneuver by business. State and federal legislatures as well as philanthropists have been led to believe they are investing in higher education when they are not. They are proud of what they are doing and expect to receive public recognition for their actions, which they do. They pass laws to appropriate or otherwise feed big money to institutions of higher education including appropriating scholarships of one kind or another. Look at the facts.

Tuition costs are sky rocketing. It is common for a student to face a $50,000 per year tuition. Consequently, at graduation he/she has sold his or her future to a loan agency. University presidents are earning over a million dollars a year. Campuses are building more and more buildings and expanding faculties. In fact, the so-called teaching faculty of colleges out number of students. An often-proposed argument for immigration is that we need in import highly educated immigrants; for example, we hear that, “We should staple a Green Card to every foreign PhD that applies for citizenship.”  Private educational institutions are expanding at an accelerated rate. The U.S. Department of Commerce holds forums for college presidents concerning introduction of entrepreneurship into Public Universities. We have university presidents bragging bout how they have made entrepreneurship part of tenure decision. We have laws say that universities professors can patent results discover through use of federal funding. The list could go on and on filling page after page. What does it all tell us?

I should tell us that good people such as Julianne Malveaux has been duped. Our universities are no longer teaching institutions; they are part of a gigantic university industrial complex.  A private college can earn hands full of money; if they could not they would not exist.  A class 30 student paying $50,000 per year tuition could pay a professor $900,000 dollars a year—everyone knows they do not do this. Think of a university, which has an enrollment of 50,000 students. Do you want to count the zeros following the $25; there are eight of them. It is big business.

How do we explain the huge disparity between the tuition, the additional government funding that comes one way or anther from taxpayer’s dollars?  It is easier than you might think. Money politicians labeled “for teaching”, college administrators are funneling into research to benefit business, not the students. The expanding campuses happen because of research building. The huge faculty numbers are not teaching professors they are research professors.  Teaching professors are made into second-class citizen if they are not good researchers. The result university president who earn one million dollar per year hire researchers to help earn their pay. They go along with the idea that tenure depends on how that “teacher” contributes to the promotion of business by inventing something that he or she can market. The University of Minnesota even gives them one year with benefits to start their business.

Why do we have to encourage highly educated immigrant? We have slammed the door of a working person family to go to college. We have colleges that are no longer interested in teaching anyone anything so our graduates are less prepared then foreign graduates.  It is more complex than that as explained in University Industrial Complex (Amazon Kindle) but be careful, most of the books with similar titles were by authors who support the idea of industries dominating all higher educational institutions. Isn’t it about time we atop using our universities as front organizations for industry and  return our universities into educational institutions by getting rid of the costly research atmosphere. To do that we should cut university funding.