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Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Here's Another Clear Thinker... ...on university matters. (I'll do a little prose-dusting for him here and there because I can't help it.) It's from an opinion piece in the Oregon Statesman Journal, about the proposed education budget for the state's public university system: Oregon has proven itself a state where a significant number of its residents apparently do not value higher education for themselves or their offspring and are therefore not disposed to support it. It may be a working class mentality, it may be a negative reaction to academia ("Eggheads") [Fine, eggheads. But why capitalized, and why stuck in a parenthesis?], it may be due to a lack of vision among the general population about the difference higher education can make in a person's job and career prospects. Whatever the reason or reasons [just go with "reasons"], the disposition of so many Oregonians not to advocate for the support of higher education in Oregon is probably why so many of the current members of the Legislature are dragging their feet on the governor's proposed budget. In fact, it has been reported that a number of them view the proposed increases as unrealistic and unsustainable. We may have to settle for a low [national] ranking and give up on trying to keep up with the "Joneses" [Drop the quotation marks.]. The alternative for those who espouse the increases being to move to a state where research on the subject discloses more support and a higher ranking! [Number of problems here: "Espouses" is the wrong word. "Support" would be better. Then when you get into the "being to..." formulation it's just awkward -- you end up with a sentence fragment. Rewrite more simply: "Supporters of tax increases should move to a state..." And drop the exclamation point!!] If the salary secrecy is true, it's pretty surprising. Public employees' salaries are usually public, aren't they? Anyway, the man speaks a basic truth: The taxpayers of certain states - Florida, Alabama, and apparently Oregon - don't care much about higher education. Their legislatures tend to mirror this. |