School Daze

Steve Goodman, an educational consultant, writes:

[N]ow the professors and administrators are more likely to be playing politics -- and more and more Americans with college-age kids are getting fed up with it. In 18 years of in-the-trenches experience counseling kids on their college choices, I've never seen the unhappiness as widespread as it is today. If colleges don't tone down the politics, and figure out how to control ballooning costs, they run the risk of turning off enough American consumers that many campuses could marginalize themselves right out of existence.

And that includes those that depend on state taxpayers, like the one where Ward Churchill makes close to $100 grand a year. Harvard, Yale and Princeton don't need to worry; they have huge endowments. I have a son who went to Harvard, but I wouldn't encourage anyone else to send kids there.