GR's Chipco Stomp Preview

[Henry M]

Steely you rascal. When you give out "facts" that you would take 
apart if someone else were to produce such insubstantial 
substantiation, do you know what you are doing? Sometimes I will 
argue a point with my 12-year old and when I drop in a "fact" cause 
it sounds good even if it's irrelevant, I know what I'm doing and so 
does she and calls me on it. And then I admit it - yes, I was full of 
it. How about you, Steely?

Take for instance that average salary. That's an average that 
includes professors that have spent a lifetime teaching teaching 
people who then get out of college and earn twice that much their 
first year in business.

As for your quote from  Nicholas Von Hoffman - I see no indication 
where the tuition increases are going. Could it be that the much 
needed "repairs to infrastructure" that have sat on the back-burner 
for years are being partly paid for by the actual consumers of 
education, the students? Your quote does nothing to support your 
contention that academia is a get rich quick scheme.

As far as tenure goes, sure, other industries don't have it. But 
you'll be happy to note that it's rapidly disappearing, and with it 
go teachers that have views that aren't mainstream. Oh, well. No 
great loss to us blue-collar types, eh, Steely?

> Date:          Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:12:01 -0700
> To:            pynchon-l at waste.org
> From:          sitka at teleport.com (Steelhead)
> Subject:       GR's Chipco Stomp Preview

<SNIPE>

> In Oregon, for example, the average salary of a tenured professor at a
> state university is $48,000. And Oregon ranks in the bottom tenth of states
> in terms of renumeration for college professors. By comparison, Pynchon's
> annual income in the early 80s is reported at around $10,000. This means
> that college professors who are teaching TRP's work are earning 4 to 5
> times what TRP received for writing his three major (and most (over)written
> about) books: V., Col 49, and GR. Multiply the annual salary by the number
> of professors teaching Pynchon, using his writings to earn their PhD's, and
> you are quickly into the millions of dollars a year. Why shouldn't he
> receive a cut of this massive hemorrhage of money? Isn't it an infringement
> (and in many cases a debasement) of his intellectual property rights?
> 
> Sitting in the lounge I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal, which
> as Chomsky sez is one of the few places to get unfiltered news (since the
> Elites need straight information) and found an excerpted paragraph from a
> recent column on the state of American education by Nicholas Von Hoffman.
> Von Hoffman is one of the country's most irreverant and best writers. His
> reporting on Mississippi Freedom rides stands as some of the most chilling
> and powerful prose produced in the 1960s. His weekly column is now picked
> up by the New York (and Texas--available even in inhospitable Lubbock)
> Observer.
> 
> Here's what Nicky V.H. had to say on American Universities:
> 
> "Between 1980 and 1995, four-year college tuition rose 256 percent--three
> times the rate of inflation during the same time. If we used the same tools
> of analysis that are being brought to bear to show that the cost-of-living
> index is overstated, we would point out that the real costs of college are
> much higher, because adademic standards have continued to slip since 1980
> and we are, therefore, paying much more for a service that is constantly
> slipping in quality. In terms of equivalencies, a bachelor of arts degree
> in 1997 may not even be the equal of a graduation certificate from an
> academic high school in 1947."
> 
> Steely
> 

AsB4
Keep cool, but care. -- TRP
Moderation in moderation. -- Husky Mariner