This is just one of those paragraphs from Victor Davis Hanson that I had to post. Enjoy:
Examine also that most reactionary of institutions, the university — which fuels many of the cultural and academic arguments against conservatism. For decades tuition has risen far higher than the rate of inflation to subsidize everything from rock-climbing walls and designer dorms to superfluous race/class/gender “studies” courses and reduced teaching loads. So it is time for academia to pay its fair share. Republicans should make the argument against all sorts of tax-evasive compensation. Why do many professors get tax-free tuition waivers for their children? Surely if a well-paid professor can have his children receive sizable reductions in tuition, he should pay taxes on that perk. Do we really wish to subsidize the lifestyle of the Elizabeth Warren household? Universities should not be able to create Byzantine tax-avoidance programs for administrators, who have become veritable CEO grandees without the stigma of belonging to the 1 percent. I am not aware of other professions — doctors, lawyers, accountants — whose members demand lifetime tenure after six years. Why should students have to borrow for inflationary tuition in an era of near deflation, for the benefit of the elite whose commercial practices are secretive and mostly hidden from the public? If the point of tenure was to ensure free speech and diversity, then it has utterly failed, given that the university is the home of speech codes and monolithic ideologies. I know of none outside the campus — not farmers, not 7-Eleven workers, not nurses — who enjoy lifetime tenure or have their children given nearly free college educations.
