You Go, Bro!
From PZ Myers' excellent Pharyngula. Along with the snail porn and snarks about whingdang fool creationists, this piece on the fate of universities is well worth reading.
His point: Legislatures love to cut university funding, because nothing obviously bad happens immediately. So clearly that was wasteful spending. And next year...look, we did it again, and nothing bad happened! ("Bad" meaning "embarrassing scandal that cost me my legislative seat".)
Yes, Dr. Myers is employed by a university. So am I. This does not make our advocacy invalid, though the careful reader is right to be skeptical. Read the logic. Do the math. You'll find he's right: If we don't turn around the practice of bleeding our great universities white, our trajectory toward Third World status will only accelerate. (We're currently ranked 15th in the U.N. Human Development Index. In 1985 we were #2. Any bets on the 2009 and 2010 rankings?)
His point: Legislatures love to cut university funding, because nothing obviously bad happens immediately. So clearly that was wasteful spending. And next year...look, we did it again, and nothing bad happened! ("Bad" meaning "embarrassing scandal that cost me my legislative seat".)
Yes, Dr. Myers is employed by a university. So am I. This does not make our advocacy invalid, though the careful reader is right to be skeptical. Read the logic. Do the math. You'll find he's right: If we don't turn around the practice of bleeding our great universities white, our trajectory toward Third World status will only accelerate. (We're currently ranked 15th in the U.N. Human Development Index. In 1985 we were #2. Any bets on the 2009 and 2010 rankings?)
posted by lupus @ 8:55 AM
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