Money talk.

This is in response to the item, "Higher Ed, Inc." by Charles Peters in "Tilting" (September). I am a full-time college instructor making $38,000 per year before taxes, and I do not have tenure or other job protection. Almost no one in academia who "just" teaches has anything other than a temporary job, renewable from year to year. I mention this not because I think it's wrong but to emphasize that I am not a fat-cat defending his largesse.

In my state, about 45 percent of my university's total budget used to be provided by the state government in the 1970s; now the figure is about 13 percent. It's a good thing for America that universities have preserved their research capacity by entrepreneurial means, because university research is of more than cultural benefit. A recent statement by Scientific American magazine attributed 30 percent of America's current GDP to one academic field: quantum physics.

States are shorting K-12 education in similar fashion. Because of dwindling state support, and concomitant reliance on property taxes, some school districts in nay state have three times as much to spend per child as some inner-city and rural districts do.

My university, is a land-grant institution, founded under a philosophy which held that an educated populace benefits the nation as a whore. Now that about 130,000 high school valedictorians per year cannot afford to go on to college, I think it's safe to surmise that our values must he different today. Today's college population consists of rich kids, which is why they can demand and get campus environments that include Jacuzzis and similar amenities.

Floyd Hummel 

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