Education and society evolve together. Education was historically limited to elite members of society. It socialized them into an appropriate way of living. With democratization and globalization, modern society has transformed education into a way of making a living. A fuller discussion appears on the radio station KGNU website archive. The link follows below. http://www.kgnu.org/apublicaffair/11/2/2016
Education and elections affect each other.
Educated citizens are essential for democracy, and individual education influences electoral choices.
At the same time, elections affect education. for example through public funding and influence on its content.
A fuller discussion, with particular reference to higher education and the University of Colorado appears on the radio station KGNU website archive.
The link follows below.
http://www.kgnu.org/apublicaffair/12/14/2016
There is a new Chair in Conservative Political Thought at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Among the questions that this stimulates are the following. 1) What are the qualification criteria for the potential occupants? Do they need to have academic degrees? Which ones? 2) How do they demonstrate their “conservativeness”? 3) Do they need to be registered Republicans? Is there a cutoff time for Republican registration? 4) To alleviate possible concerns about tokenism, has thought been given about ways to increase general administrative, faculty, and student Republican registration at the University? 5) Should the occupant of the Chair be rostered in or connected with a particular campus, academic department, or program ?
Published in The Daily Camera. February 17, 2013.
http://www.dailycamera.com/letters/ci_22598371/francis-beer-questions-chair-conservative-thought
Silver & Gold Record
Follow the Money Trail
The University of Colorado Board of Regents has voted to close the Silver & Gold Record, citing its $600,000 annual operating budget. This action will terminate the university’s system-wide newspaper after almost 40 years of continuous operation, in spite of strong objections by representative faculty and staff institutions.
Many in the university community are skeptical of the motivations behind this action. They believe that it weakens an important means of uniting disparate campuses in widely separate physical locations. Moreover, it narrows freedom of speech and freedom of information, as well as the practices of shared governance, which were largely ignored.
An important question is whether there were other areas where cuts might have been made. CU could justify its actions and respond to such concerns quite simply by allowing the public to see with its own eyes that there were no other reasonable sources of financing. It could increase its transparency and accountability. It could open all of its financial accounts to allow free online public inspection of public funds. Is it time to follow the money?
FRANCIS A. BEER
Professor Emeritus, Political
Science, University of Colorado
In the grip of one of the worst recessions in American economic history, citizens and businesses are reducing debt and building cash reserves to prepare for a more uncertain world. The University of Colorado, on the other hand, is increasing its debt.
A recent prospectus http://meritos.com/cgi-bin/disclaimer.pl?Did=1394 presents three new series of bonds, through which the university proposes to issue more than $239 million in new debt. Over the next 30 years this new debt will require almost $415 million (principal plus interest) debt service, though the federally backed Build America Bond Program will pay $53.7 million of the interest. The total debt service will increase to more than $1.8 billion. While the university has multiple sources of funds, this debt service inevitably provides pressure to raise student tuition, limiting accessibility and affordability for many of Colorado`s young people.
Issuing new bonds, as CU is doing, is certainly a prudent way to refinance existing obligations to lower rates, but only $24.5 million of the $239 million is being used for this purpose. The remainder is to be used partly to renovate older buildings, but, more importantly, to construct approximately 500,000 gross square feet of new buildings for biotechnology, basketball, volleyball, and student housing at Boulder; and pharmaceutical research at Denver. In addition to increased debt services, new facilities increase operating costs for utilities and maintenance in an era of diminishing operating funds.
University operations are funded by the following sources: Legislative appropriations, student tuition and fees, contracts and grants, rents (e.g. housing), services, and gifts. New financial obligations place greater demands upon these sources.
State contributions to the university`s budget have declined dramatically from $209 million at the beginning of the 2009 fiscal year to a current $88 million. There is some relief from stimulus funds, but it is temporary. The state currently contributes only 3.3 percent of the university`s operating budget of $2.6 billion.
Currently, research funds over 27 percent of CU`s budget and pays the general fund an overhead to cover its fair share of operations. Research funding could easily decrease in these difficult financial times. Loss of resources from any of the university`s funding sources would force further hard choices about which sectors of the university will survive and prosper and which will be cut to pay the bill. There have already been serious personnel cuts by attrition and the Silver and Gold Record was closed for financial reasons. There is talk of salary furloughs and freezes, program terminations, and further faculty and staff reductions. Even in this constrained environment, growth will occur in some program(s), but growth will be by substitution, not by new funding. Furthermore, if several of the university`s revenue sources were to weaken at once, the more highly leveraged university would be subject to significant pressure on its excellent bond rating.
The Regents and CU central administration have taken on new debt ostensibly in order to maintain quality and remain competitive. We are concerned by the fact that debt choices are also academic choices. These program choices need to be debated within the university community rather than implicitly being made through new debt.
Professor Ward Churchill was fired from his position at the University of Colorado, Boulder after he called the bond traders killed during the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York “LIttle Eichmanns”.
Churchill’s termination raises serious issues about the myth of freedom in America, particularly academic freedom and free speech.
The following link begins a satire in eight parts by Francis Beer and Joseph Juhasz, with artistic collaboration by Marie-Juliette Beer, about the firing.
Francis A. Beer 