Why Not Manage Universities, Mr. President?

If the federal government regulates salaries at companies accepting TARP funds, then why doesn't the government intervene to run our universities, which consume huge amounts of government money?

Think about it: Few things in our society are as costly as college education. From the moment parents look into their newborn's eyes, they begin saving for college -- the single greatest expense in their child's life. Entire life savings are dumped into college educations. Even then, that's not enough; student loans, with interest, are necessary.

My master's degree alone cost me so much -- after my parents poured everything into undergraduate educations for my brother, sister, and me -- that it took 10 years at almost $1,000 per month to pay it off. Homes in California are bargains compared to our nation's colleges. The cost of a degree is obscene.

And what about the product -- assuming the product graduates? Economically speaking, few graduates will achieve the hourly salary of their professors. Educationally speaking, these degreed citizens perform miserably in basic civic and economic literacy. (Check out the recent survey by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.)

And yet, consider the salaries of those running these universities, particularly those accepting the most government funding. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 59 public-university presidents received salaries exceeding $500,000 in 2007-8, up from 43 the previous year -- a healthy salary jack while many parents grappled with job losses.

Here's a question for Senator Chuck Schumer's staff: Have you compared the wage of these folks to the custodians who clean their offices? How about professors in Feminist Studies at Cal-Berkeley or at Columbia Teachers College vs. the stiffs who prepare their food in the cafeteria? The typical tenured professor spends under 10 hours per week in the classroom, and gets at least five full months of paid vacation. No one, from the little library lady to a GM fat-cat, enjoys those perks.

And I ask liberals: What could be as un-progressive as a mom and dad in Iowa, with a combined income under $60,000, sending their daughter to an elite Northeast university -- with their life savings not enough -- to float a bunch of PhDs who've accumulated more cash in 10 years than "mom and dad" in a lifetime?

So, why isn't President Obama reining in our colleges? Why isn't Nancy Pelosi demanding accountability?

Alas, here's the dirty little secret: Liberal Democrats see no reason to investigate universities. Why? Because colleges serve as the popular front for advancing the left's agenda. They are essentially recruiting grounds for Democratic Party voters and activists... [snip]

A 2007 study by sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University found that liberal faculty outnumber conservatives by 11-1 among social scientists and 13-1 among humanities professors. That's consistent with a long line of surveys, which tend to find self-identified liberals around 80-90% and conservatives around 10%.

It has been that way for decades. I have a folder jammed with studies. One of my favorites is an early 1990s poll that found 88% of "public affairs" faculty identifying themselves as liberal, 12% claiming to be "middle of the road," and, remarkably, 0% opting for the conservative label.

A 2003 survey by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture found these ratios of Democrats to Republicans: Swarthmore: 21-1. Bowdoin College: 23-1. Wellesley College: 23-1. Brown University: 30-1. Amazingly, the study couldn't identify a single Republican at the faculties of Williams, Oberlin, MIT, and Haverford, nor a single Republican administrator at Penn, Carnegie Mellon, or Cornell. Analyses of Cornell found 166 liberals compared to six conservatives; at UCLA, 141 liberals vs. nine conservatives.

Remember that academia champions "diversity."

Nope, there will be no demonization of rampant "greed" in this sector of the American workplace. There are only angels running our universities -- liberal angels...

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