Sometimes higher education news doesn’t come via insidehighered.com or Chronicle of Higher Education. This item came via the Drudgereport.
[Insert snickering and rude comments here.]
Fark.com would classify this as pure Florida, along with the next story on the Channel 6 web site:
“Drug Suspect’s Pet Squirrel Attacks Officer
Officer: ‘The Claws Are Very Sharp’
On the other hand, the report that convicted Tyco plunderer Dennis Kozlowski’s name is being taken off the library at Seton Hall is pure New Jersey. Of course, they’re keeping the money. I’m still wondering who got custody of the $6000 shower curtain.
Higher education’s problems with money are being compounded by the fact that there are only four major accounting firms left (Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers), and that getting their services is becoming more difficult and more expensive.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 introduced stricter financial reporting and accountability standards for public companies, which of course colleges and universities are. I hereby offer the services of my mighty home edition of TurboTax Deluxe, at far less than the $2 million that the Cal State university system pays for its audits. First, however, I must ask you to sign this disclaimer.
But on the lighter side, have a look at the interviewwith the irrepressible (indefatiguable?) Camile Paglia. Just her comments on creative writing programs (“literature, post-Plath, has drifted into a compulsive telling of any trauma that you can find in your life”) and university faculty (“They boast about having two houses and they mouth leftist platitudes”) make it worth it.
