College Crisis And The Liberal Media
One of the things you won’t find in the liberal large-market newspapers, are articles informing the public about professorial salaries in the university system. Our own uptown paper may complain about tuition hikes, telling the reader the state constitution says higher education should be free, but it doesn’t delve into the reasons for the high cost of college education.
Scott Mooneyham, who writes for the Capital Press Association, whose columns are printed in such large markets as the Lincolnton and Rocky Mount newspapers, tells us this: “At UNC-Chapel Hill, full professors were paid an average of $143,000 annually in 2009-10 … In 2000–01, the average pay at UNC-Chapel Hill was $100,900, which when adjusted for inflation comes to $127,769 in today’s dollars.”
A little problem-solving and one can see that is about $15,000 per professor per year or, one can hope, only $75 per student, per year. Which is only a $75 per-student increase since 2001 for inflating professorial salaries. So why the large increases in tuition? Actually, we’re not told by Mr. Mooneyham, but one can easily guess. One can guess that other salaries are being inflated as well, along with benefits and administration and capital costs. The football stadium at UNC Charlotte is not going to be free. Erskine Bowles, the great white budget solver, didn’t address salary levels; he cut some programs, but didn’t address the core problem which, it would seem, is inflating salaries. That will be left for someone else, perhaps Governor Walker of Wisconsin. It sure won’t be Governor Purdue of North Carolina.
Actually the problem is simple: higher education has decided it’s about the money for themselves, not the education of the students. In coordination with the left wing press they have worked with local education administrations to convince the taxpayers that everyone should go to college. So now the only vocational education available is in the Community Colleges, not high schools where it should be. No wonder people drop out. The courses that would help them in their lives aren’t available and the ones they have to take are boring. But the professors and teachers, and especially the administrators, get paid well, which is what they care about.
So who is going to repair your car? Perhaps an English major can do it. Who is going to repair your air conditioner? A History major? Education should be about learning lessons that will help one through life. The education establishment has made it about paying professors and teachers and administration. One only need notice they always need more money, but are never doing anything to give students who need a vocational education what they need.
Everyone shouldn’t go to college, not even half of the people should go. But the distortions of the education establishment, with the collusion of the gullible media, have led many to believe that is the only way to a good life. No, it is the way to make the education establishment richer while those who don’t fit the narrow mold of the college track get left out and, of course, not enough money is at fault.
This is the problem of a partisan media. It will be true of the right as well as the left. Something is going to get left out when the editors or the writers have an opinion about how things ought to be.
Maybe this is the reason we don’t see anything about salaries in college in the news. Maybe there is some other reason. The fact is the press is partisan, so you should get your news from more than one source.
Get both sides. Get all four sides. Be informed so you can make informed decision.
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