Cuts to higher education in Louisiana over the past ten years have been some of the deepest in the nation, and have caused what could be termed an effective privatization of public universities; tuition and fees have grown rapidly and unsustainably (100% at LSU). The resolution could be supported and adopted by Faculty Senates and other entities, as well as supported by individuals, as the issue is of broad interest, to students, their families, faculty, and also administrators and politicians. We aim to bring to the center of discussion the role that public universities serve as a “public good,” not just as a private benefit to graduates. This understanding, of course, was central in the Morrill Act that formed land-grant colleges in every state, although it has been eroded in recent times. But Newfield believes this erosion can still be reversed.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Meg Tufano, Facebook post today: more and more the country is no longer a nation. Forget “one” nation—if we cannot capture the wealth we’re creating from the human capital in our own country (stolen either through actual robbery of intellectual property—or by siphoning off profit into non-state piles of cash (Seychelles, etc.), then we cannot collectively gain from “drawing out” the genius in our own people (“educare” from the Latin, to draw out)—and so we are more like a mob town—–very safe to walk down the street (because you don’t know who has a gun, or whose daughter I might be), but impossible to create an integrated life (a life of health, wealth, purpose, love) because all of that requires the kind of trust that is now missing—AND because there is no longer the infrastructure (no money for that–only money for the quick fix, the “active investors”).
Are we educating students, or preying upon them? I want to say. Are we a community of scholars, or a mob town? But this would be too negative.