Iowa U. Needs $40M, Decides To Hold Bake Sale

San Francisco Gate ^ | 4/5/02

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Professors at the University of Iowa have a secret weapon in their fight to help the school rebound after losing millions of dollars in state budget cuts.

They want to hold a bake sale.

"Obviously, it is unlikely that a bake sale will raise the approximately $40 million in lost funding," said engineering professor Wilfrid Nixon. But "there's clearly a public relations aspect to this."

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Heard of this problem before? Education lacking funds? Maybe too much spending needs to be addressed?

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to use dollar signs in "keywords"? I'd tell you what some things cost...

[Wolfie]

"Obviously, it is unlikely that a bake sale will raise the approximately $40 million in lost funding," said engineering professor Wilfrid Nixon.

Hey, this guy's sharp! They should make him an economics professor too.

[Grut]

'Doing anything' passing as 'doing something'.

[Wolfie]

On the other hand, if they bake up a bunch of those brownies I remember from college, they might be on to something.

[Tacis]

Maybe, if they forced the tenured faculty to work FOR THE UNIVERSITY instead of for their private consulting firms, writing self-aggrandizing articles, or working on conferences that do the University no good, they could save a fortune on faculty salaries. The rationale was that by advancing their personal interests, faculty also advanced the name/reputation of the university. FALSE! This is a state funded university whose job is to educaye that children of the state's taxpayers. Bakesale? These clowns are as inept at doing their own baking as they are at doing their own teaching. This does nothing more than demonstrate the excesses of imperial faculty at state universities.

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Why are these colleges short of cash?

[folklore]

Maybe they could call Rush, he is pretty good at bake sales. LOL!

[Grut]

...those brownies I remember from college...

You mean those 'Alice B. Toklas' brownies?

[CasearianDaoist]

Maybe they could shut down the "victimology" departments (Women's Studies, Black Studies, etc.) and go back to the role that land grant, state Universities were designed for: Providing a practical and low cost education in fields that serve the interests of the citizens of the home state. Go to Harvard if you want to be a "writer;" go to UI if you want to teach English in Iowa.

[Irene Adler]

"Why are these colleges short of cash?"

The state of Iowa is going through a serious budget crunch, for some reason a lot of us Iowans don't understand too well. It seemed to happen all of a sudden, from comfortably in the black to no money. It happened right after the election of our democratic governor (Vilsack); don't know the exact connection. However, all of the three state universities are being forced to reduce their budgets and raise tuition and fees. Have been told by an administrator that it is likely the percentage of university costs born by the student instead of the state will rise significantly and permanently.

One interesting result of all this to watch a democratic governor who is completely hamstrung with no big state dollars to distribute to all the usual toadies. He has been trying still to increase public school funding to pay off the NEA which busted its collective rear to get him elected, but I don't think he has been terribly successful, though he has squeezed some increases out for them.

He is apparently afraid to suggest a tax increase. Good.

[SoDak]

Jessie Ventura said last year while fighting with the Univ. of MN on funding that education is a black hole that could never be filled. He said if he fulfilled everything the University wanted this year, that anything less than the rate of increase from last year in the next year's budget would be portrayed as draconian. One of the few things he's been dead right on. It's something everyone knows but few politicians have the guts to say in public.

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

You need Harley Race up there to do a few summer camps.

[PLK]

Women's Studies, Black Studies, etc.)

What do graduates of these programs do with their education? Is there a market for their "skills?" What career choices do they have? (I am not being facetious, I want to know.)

[CasearianDaoist]

If they go all the way to a Phd. they might get a job as a academic somewhere. Hard to get one now though. At best all of this is a welfare system for academics; at worst it is larceny.

[CasearianDaoist]

When I was a kid in Iowa way back when there was almost no tuition at the state universities. I know people who got through school working part time as waiters and bartenders. The Universities should have stuck to their knitting.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Tuition costs seem to be driven by out-of-state and out-of-country students who are willing to pay any amount to get in. This price tolerance raises the price in-staters are charged.

[CasearianDaoist]

Again, they depated from their mission; if they would have stuck to their orignal charter they would not have this problem. The reason they did not do this is,I suspect, that they either did not understand it, or it was not high-falutin' enough for them. Ah! the sixties...those sins will always be with us.