Some great ideas from Bruce Walker:
The left plans to pitch to middle-class families and young adults who want a college degree to make college free. Conservatives have a great chance to counterpunch on this issue. Academia, like all other institutions under the totalitarian thumb of the left, is ridiculously expensive and filled with all sorts of pet bureaucracies. The approach of the left is not to cut the costs of college and to make it as easy and cheap as possible, but rather to subsidize whatever academicians’ bray that they need without any serious questioning.
Higher education is, of course, heavily dependent upon government appropriation, government grants, federal student loans, tax-deductible contributions by alumni, and so on. Conservatives ought to use these levers to compel any institution of higher learning to limit its expenses in order to qualify for any sort of government help, direct or indirect. Here are some ideas about what to propose as reforms within academia.
Limit the annual compensation for any professor or administrator to $150,000 per year, or the top five percent of income in America. Index the maximum compensation to inflation so that it rises gradually over time, but not faster than inflation. This would force the left to defend paying sky-high salaries, a cost today paid by students’ and parents’ hard-earned dollars and by government support. These professors are the “rich,” and ordinary people will have a tough time grasping the left’s whine that no one can live on a measly $150,000 per year.
Also require that professors actually teach in the classroom for twenty hours each week of school. This will reduce the need for graduate assistance and other flunkies doing most of the real work while professors lounge.
Another abuse that needs to be corrected is the high cost of textbooks, particularly textbooks that just happen to be written by professors teaching classes in which the textbooks are required. Prohibit colleges to require in any subject the books written by professors at the college. These textbooks cost a lot of money, and that money goes back into the professors’ pockets.
Read more: American Thinker
Image credit: www.mercatornet.com.
