Money – it’s a hit
(In response to Athena Salman’s Thursday column “Goldwater falls short.”)
In the recent article "Goldwater falls short," Ms. Salman criticized the practice of lumping executive positions with laboratory and library staff.
While it is not technically correct to view library and laboratory staff as administrative expenses, they still are indirect costs or overhead, much like the salary of a factory supervisor, as opposed to a direct cost, such as labor or raw materials.
Secondly, Sen. David Braswell, answering a question I posed to him during a debate with his primary opponent, Lori Klein, stated that the legislature appropriates more money to the schools if they enroll more students, which would make the "high tuition, high enrollment" model make sense.
Finally, in terms of state funding, don't expect that to increase any time soon. Proposition 100 is only expected to turn a $3 billion deficit into a $2 billion deficit and, with the new health care law's state mandates, it is likely that even more money will be redirected from higher education to other programs in Arizona. Raising taxes in an economic recession won't help either, especially when we can't even coax solar energy companies to do business here. The state needs to cut its own expenses and reform the tax code to make businesses want to come to Arizona (see: generate more revenue).
Corbin Smith
Undergraduate
In her column regarding the Goldwater Institute's report on administrative bloat at ASU, Ms. Salman fails, like ASU in its own statement on Aug. 13, to accurately explain why the number of non-teaching staff (or whatever definition you like) per student has increased while the number of teachers per student has decreased.
Ms. Salman also states that think tanks like Goldwater should spend more time coming up with ways to reduce costs for education. If Ms. Salman would have spent five minutes on Goldwater's website, she would have found that the Goldwater Institute has literally dozens of proposals to improve public education and reduce costs for both students and state governments.
The people of Arizona recently passed a tax increase to help support public universities in this state, and those universities have an obligation to the people of Arizona to create the most cost-effective universities possible, especially in the tough economic times we find ourselves in.
The Goldwater Institute was helping to insure that ASU stays true to this obligation.
Dan Caldwell
Reader
(In response to Oday Shahin’s Tuesday column “Deconstructing Gaza.”)
Give Gaza a chance
Thank you for publishing the factually correct column by Oday Shahin.
I am an American who visited Gaza alone eight long years ago and saw it as a jail then, as it is now. I could barely get in, and no Gazans could get out. Hamas was a small but growing political faction at that time.
The so-called peace talks about to begin are insincere and can only fail because the people who live in Gaza and the West Bank are not represented. The so-called peace talks treat Mahmoud Abbas as the Palestinians' leader, but he was unelected almost three years ago. That makes him an appointed puppet president (much like Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan) serving at the will of Israel and the U.S. government.
What if some European state held a world conference on disbanding NATO or global warming and invited Sen. John McCain and Bill Clinton to represent the USA instead of President Barack Obama? No one would go! If we believe in democracy, we must accept those elected and give them a chance to govern.
Charles Carlson
Reader
