More Hypocrisy: University System Faculty Authorize Strike

Unhappy faculty at the 14 institutions of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education have taken a strike vote, authorizing a walkout. A walkout will depend on how negotiations go but the vote was overwhelming and faculty members say they are serious.

A professor asked about the potential strike said higher education was under attack and they would make a statement to the nation that the attack is not acceptable. What should happen of course is that anyone with tenure who leaves his/her classes should lose their tenure-at the very least.

Maybe the professor should look around at what is happening to the education system. Graduates are leaving college with massive amounts of debt and a huge percentage cannot find employment in their chosen field. What is the point of turning out millions of graduates whose education cannot be used to launch a career capable of paying off student loans and making up for the foregone earnings during the five or six years they took getting a degree?

And why do universities continue their push to offer degrees in more and more esoteric fields for which the only employment opportunities are with government or non-profit special interest advocacy groups that depend heavily on government dollars? But most importantly, why should faculty be rewarded for their heavy handed politically correct, statist views they try to impart to students? Survey after survey finds graduates in large numbers lack basic knowledge of the nation’s history and how a free economy works. Little wonder so many college graduates lean left politically and support government do-good programs and stringent regulations on the private sector.

College degrees have become increasingly less reliable as a predictor of future success as the quality of education and significance of a diploma have undergone a long and continuous process of being replaced by lack of rigor and focus as colleges have fallen under the seductive pull of the siren song of political correctness and progressivism. While at the same time there has been scant attention paid to the consequences of the deepening lack of basic discipline and abandonment of common sense.

Here’s a suggestion for the faculty so eager for more pay. Go find a job in the real world where you won’t be coddled but will instead get compensated based on the market value of your productivity. Pleading for ever more taxpayer dollars to subsidize higher education in its current form and condition should be an embarrassment rather than the manifestation of a false sense of righteous indignation it actually represents.

There is no ignoring the real world to compare to that exhibited by insulated faculty at state owned colleges. Whose taxes do they want to see raised to get the compensation package they seek? Let them answer that question.

Unionized faculties are anathema to quality education and any logical notion of how a university should be operated. One would have thought that tenure and other privileged status would be enough power vis-à-vis university management. Not so in Pennsylvania.