Tenure and unions anyone? I remember when we cut faculty at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Last hired, first fired.

Made no sense at all. Our latest hire, a young female with an MS in Landscape Design, got laid off. I used my power to get her an interview at TAMU. She got the job, got the $10,000 pay raise, and was so happy!!!!

TAMU is a good example of how the big boys play the game: they hold slots open and wait for talent to appear and then pick off the good ones. TAMU's departments always have an opening... smart administration. Plan ahead and you will corner the market of talent and energy. Thus the big schools beat the idiot schools for the grants and the ideas and the patents, etc. etc. etc.

Cut them all, Utah, and watch your competitors grow in wealth and prestige.

The future belongs to the educated, not the ones who figured out how to balance the budget in the short run, or use Distance Learning. Utah is being so shortsighted.

This will be a great time for UVU to complete cutting off their community college heritage and drop the technical programs that they have been trying to get away from, with the excuse that budget cuts are forcing them to do it. Then they'll continue their institutional mission creep into the research university sector by claiming that they need professors to bring in more grant money to help them cover overhead. Their journey will be complete.

This is manipulative management, it takes its workers that retire off the departments budget and adds them to the retirement budget, a seperate state budget. The retired workers are still getting paid out of taxes at a much less income, but it makes this department look good. And usually when there is a reduction of force, it is usually done by a seniority basis, which I don't have a problem with. Experience is more valuable than the number of degrees a new employee has. However, at the same time we don't want to keep a marginal employee who's performance is not up to standards. This is why supervisors must keep and maintain accurate records of employees performance and follow through to lay off undesirable performers.

This is a regrettable but wise move because there are some faculty who have already retired on-the-job and just haven't told anyone yet. This has and does happen so why not help these faculty realize their post-work dreams.

. . . belongs to the educated. That's why this entire discussion misses the point. Ivory Tower occupants are the least educated portion of society, at least as concerns real issues!

Tenure? Unions? Who cares? American education, like the American auto, has priced itself out of the market, and is rapidly approaching irrelevance to its consumers.

Our dirty little secret is out � higher education is actually performed by non-tenured instructors and graduate assistants. How long before served public and served industries realize that meaningful, quality education can be had for significantly less than we currently charge?

You appear to have captured at least one important point � it's the education that's important, not our petty squabbles regarding how best to divide an ever-shrinking pie.

The question becomes, do we have the foresight, integrity, and common sense to look the problem in the eye and solve it? Or will we leave it to smarter, more entrepreneurial types?

I fear we'll continue true to form � arguing over the arrangement of deck chairs, listening to "Nearer My God to Thee," as we sink below the waves.

To the Future Indeed. You do not know what you do not know. True, solid, future oriented industry and think tanks, etc., move to sites that have strong academic programs. Think silicon valley, for example.

At my university, we professors teach and do research. In the classroom, undergraduate, we use full professors. We are as modern as can be with our pedagogy and stretegy, tactics, and tools.

If you want a solid progressive society, one that will last in the future, it has to built upon education for the masses, with qualifications and accreditations for the few (think doctors, for example).

Universities are not expensive, ignorance is expensive.