Lemme see if I have this right, you're calling an anti-union, pro-business paper that replicates Mackinaw Center line on things as liberal? That's like saying that CNN is liberal because its not as far right as FOX.
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: How does Republican intransigence, and that list of anti's cause
> tuition to go up ? How does fiscal crisis cause tuition to go up ? By
> cuts in state aid to institutions of higher learning ?
>
Really, you claim to be a Marxist on FB and you can ask this question? At least since I have been in MI - 1998 - Republican leadership and Senate intransigence has kept the state from even coming close to funding public universities in a manner which keeps up with rising operating costs. While the gross number of dollars going to higher ed has gone up or been stable, each and every one has a higher enrollment and energy and health costs have exploded, which is not to mention all the unfunded mandates from federal and state sources or the fact that all the large university-industry research and technology transfer agreements (as well as 99% of all major NIH/NSF/military research grants) cost far more to execute and administer than they bring in in overhead costs. You know full well that in 1980 public funding to large public universities was sufficient to have a TA for pretty much every 25 students, and that now it is close to one TA for every 100 and often no TAs for classes of less than 100 and somehow you think that that I might be wrong in thinking that the cyclical and repeated fiscal crises in MI could have something to do with this. Dude, I wrote a book on this stuff.
> ^^^^^
> CB: What is the 1/64th truth ? That profs and admin's pay is going up ?
>
Glad you're paying attention. You got that right but, its also worth noting that you accept that going up is illegitimate (or keeping up with inflation) as if the whole construction of the problem by the Mackinaw Center explicitly brackets the production of the scarcity in the first place - a classically reactive, if not reactionary, approach.
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: I don't agree to that. I've responded cogently to your post. I
> think the bourgeois press may be making an accurate claim that profs
> and administrators' pay is going up when so many others , including
> teachers in secondary and elementary school, face cuts.
>
Again, your response was not cogent, it swallowed the reactionary worm hook, line and sinker. Even if we accept that "fact" you claim they get right, the fact is not what the article was about - the article was about radically misinterpreting the fact in the name of reactionary neoliberal policy... or did you miss that?
>
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: Well that's a non-sequitur. The newspaper article's main seeming
> fact is that profs and administrators' pay is going up. I introduced
> as a question on this thread tuition rising for decades. It's a lot
> higher than when I was in college and law school (even considering
> inflation I think)
>
Yes, it is higher but you by refusing to interrogate that fact are supporting the Mackinaw Center's and Freep's reactive position. The reason tuition's going up is because the legislature now only pays about 20% of public university costs and those costs have risen far faster than inflation. If salaries are going up and high rates it is not in the traditional collegiate programs but in the ever more reified and promoted professional programs which compete with private industry - and its insanely inflated professional salaries over the last 30 years - or in science and technology programs where neoliberal policy has generated not only the commodification of knowledge but also a revolving door between universities and industries. If benefits and infrastructural costs have gone up, which they have, it is because energy and health care costs have exploded AND because the decline in state monies coincides with an ever increasing need to compete for the best students which means in many cases having to increase the quality of facilities far beyond anything reasonable. But heck, whatever you do, continue to accept your facts, their importance and moral outrage from sources like those you suggest often accurately report things... I can't imagine that it'll do anything but serve you well.
Wesley's point about the staggering explosion of the cost of security systems and police forces holds some water, too, eh?