Why does college cost so much, and Sammy Hagar and wife - now, why are those two topics related?

On Sunday night, I was surfing my TV channels, when I stumbled up a show on Fox News, titled Why Does College Cost So Much?, hosted by no other than Newt Gingrich, the ultimate has-been politician. Of course, it caught my attention because of its topic, so, I watched for a bit (don't shoot me for watching Fox News, please!).

Of course, I realized pretty quickly that this show was total bunk, when there was a whole segment on how the high cost of post-secondary education has been caused by college professors, those ivory tower prima donnas who are getting higher and higher salaries while teaching less and less. And, God forbid, they write books that no one ever reads on arcane topics. I cannot begin to tell you how this is wrong, wrong, wrong. This may be the case at Tier I, big research, and highly prestigious institutions, but I would venture that it is totally untrue for at least 75% of all institutions of higher learning. In most of those places, professors who retire are not being replaced or being replaced with adjuncts who are temporary (and thus, have no job security and are paid at the minimal salary level), and who often teach only part-time (no need to pay benefits!). In the meantime, full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty find themselves teaching larger and larger classes. So, the myth of the spoiled college professor "who works only 20 hours a week" is just that - a myth. I can assure you that, during the school year, I sometimes put in many more hours a week than when I was working in business. In my honest opinion, most universities have actually cut cost on faculty salaries over the past 5 to 10 years.

As far as "writing books on arcane topics that no one ever reads" - well that may be true, but I firmly believe that the intellectual ferment produced by this seemingly useless scholarship is absolutely essential in academia. I remember a friend - whose track I have now lost, but who is now a professor of history at a mid-western university - who would joke at the fact that he had written a Master's thesis on the peach basket industry in Lower Delaware at the turn of the century. "Who cares?" he would say. Well, I say, it is very unfortunate if no one cares, because this stuff is very interesting - peaches actually represented (and may still represent) a good part of the livelihood of many folks in Lower Delaware, and the peach basket industry was very closely related to the production of peaches. Even though it's not a "burning" topic, it is still useful to look at how such a cottage industry functioned at the time.

I just can't buy the argument that money at most university is squandered on faculty salaries and cushy perks.

Another argument made on that show was that higher education is more expensive nowadays because colleges have turned into country clubs, with jacuzzis, ultra-modern recreation centers with climbing walls, state-of-the art theaters that offer a splendid line up of great performances all year long, etc. Those things have become commonplace on campuses - because students want them. Once, a colleague remarked that "in the 1990's, we had witnessed the 'battle of the rec centers' among universities," and that "in the 2000's, we are seeing the 'battle of the residences.'" Universities are now welcoming their first classes of students who have always had a private room at home, and are no longer willing to share a cramped dorm room with a roommate (my own daughter, who had to live on campus at Pitt during her freshman year, immediately opted to share a spacious apartment with 3 roommates last year, found that 3 roommates was two too many, and is now sharing another apartment with just one roommate.) That's why universities have been going wild building new housing featuring apartments or suites, in which students have their own individual bedroom, and share all other living quarters with 2 or 3 "house mates."

The one segment that was beyond preposterous on that show was one focusing on a young woman who had just graduated from Scranton College (in my beautiful state of Pennsylvania), with something like $80,000 in student loans - and was actually wiping tears off her eyes during her interview segment. And she had borrowed this huge amount of money to get a degree in Special Education, with which she was able to land a job in which she made a mere $30,000/year. Now, this girl blamed her very poor choice of a college that was way too expensive for her, based on her family's financial means (her father had just been diagnosed with lymphoma when she started school, and her mother had quit her job to take care of him), on some very bad advice that she had received from a high school guidance counselor and possibly from some Scranton College Admissions officer (Scranton College had declined to have a representative interviewed for this program.) Now, this kid could have completed the same degree at a state school similar to mine for less than half of what she had spent at Scranton (in fact, for a bit less than $30,000 total for four years.)

This show really got my goat, so I switched channels and landed on Emeril's show on the Food Network. The show's theme was "tequila" (a liquor that I have never tasted in my entire life, and have absolutely no desire to taste - ever.) The fun bit about this show is that, for some strange reason, Sammy Hagar (well, now that I have read the Wikipedia entry on Hagar, I know that he once recorded as song titled ""Mas Tequila" (on his Red Voodoo album), and that he "markets a highly successful line of premium tequilas called Cabo Wabo. Anyway, one fun thing was to see Hagar's model wife Kari with him on the set. I may be totally wrong, and perhaps this woman is a member of Mensa, but she did not appear to be the brightest crayon in the box (well, after all, she did marry a super-conservative republican who supports the war in Iraq... This alone speaks for itself, wouldn't you say?). Anyway, I never liked Hagar nor Van Halen, so when Sammy stepped to the mike to perform, I turned off the tube and went off to play on my computer.