Universities facing "unprecedented budget challenges" need to look in the mirror.

Did the university shoot itself in the foot?
Is it not self-sufficient? Is enrollment down below a benchmark that was supposed to trigger a special budget review, but did not?

Does it have contractors who are locked in for extended periods with cost-overruns?

Through one-time donations, did the university over-construct infrastructure that now requires unforseen massive annual infusions of funds to maintain?

In an effort to draw more students, did the university defer its core curriculum value system to teaching for popular high-paying jobs, despite the transient nature and out-sourcing risk of those career choices?

Why does the university have a competitive extra-curricular sports program? Doe it cost more than it's worth?

What kind of recruiters show up at job fairs hosted by the university? Are they Fortune 500, or minimum-wage paying part-time employers and insurance business pyramid schemers?

Is the university forced to recruit from great distances, and pay exorbitant six-digit salaries to high-level staffers, while maintaining a majority of professors as "Associate?"

What is the success rate of the university graduates? Does anyone know? Is it public information?

Perhaps universities facing "unprecedented budget challenges" are facing them for a reason.

Shoe is now on the other foot. Waaa! F'n Waaa!

The 2007 Federal Fiscal Budget meeting that aired on C-SPAN (3/29/06) provided a clear example of demonstrating the immediacy behaviors of committee members who were either actively listening; trying to listen but unconsciously distracted (using adapters); or clearly demonstrating contempt for a speaker by displaying signals of disinterest by overly dramatic use of adaptors (fidgeting, picking lint, swiveling their chairs from side to side, looking at the ceiling or other papers.

The 2007 Federal Budget meeting was dominated by Republicans by a 3 to 1 margin. Nearly all proposals from Democrats were voted against by Republican members with exception to amendments containing nothing more than a “Sense of the Congress.”

The Republican Party’s dominance by sheer numbers at the committee meeting created a situation of futility for the Democrats. The sense of absolute power in the room was demonstrated particularly by junior Republican congressmen who, while a Democrat was speaking, would lean back in their chairs, attend to lint on their sleeves, begin rocking from side to side, pick up a piece of paper and look at it, tap their pencils, look at the ceiling, lower their eyebrows and curl the corners of their mouths back in expressions that covey the message “here we go again.”

These behaviors are sometimes triggered by loud and/or condescending tones of voice, eyebrows lowered and wrinkled, arms akimbo, finger pointing, hand wringing, and salient rhetoric.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, and still, Democrats are trying to reach across the isle, and still, they draw back stumps.

Who is better? What could Republicans possibly expect from Democrats.