Money talk.

• Author: Hummel, Floyd
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

This is in response to the item, "Higher Ed, Inc." by Charles Peters in "Tilting" (September). I am a full-time college instructor making $38,000 per year before taxes, and I do not have tenure or other job protection. Almost no one in academia who "just" teaches has anything other than a temporary job, renewable from year to year. I mention this not because I think it's wrong but to emphasize that I am not a fat-cat defending his largesse.

In my state, about 45 percent of my university's total budget used to be provided by the state government in the 1970s; now the figure is about 13 percent. It's a good thing for America that universities have preserved their research capacity by entrepreneurial means, because university research is of more than cultural benefit. A recent statement by Scientific American magazine attributed 30 percent of America's current GDP to one academic field: quantum physics.

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