Sultans of academe.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Media coverage of higher education - Column

Ah, springtime. When the journalistic heart turns to themes du printemps, like golf (I AM TIGER WOODS); graduation (How Colleges are Gouging U); and foaling (Big Questions as Woman Gives Birth at 63). Meanwhile, new dad Tony Randall, seventy-seven, is the darling of the talk-show circuit.

College graduation and golf may not have much in common, except that the former can lead, all too tragically, to the latter. But the recent coverage of Tiger Woods and higher education is a prime example of go-with-the-flow pack journalism. Let's review.

First, I have the cushiest job in America. What's my line? Why, I'm a college professor. You know what that means. We work only six hours a week. We have all our summers off. We get to indoctrinate our students with politically correct, Marxist-feminist dogma, much of which we transmit through films and videos so we don't have to teach. And we get paid $120,000 a year. Not bad.

This portrait of those of us who teach in the country's colleges and universities gained currency during the Bush Administration when Newsweek featured a cover story about us with the headline, Thought Police. The ever-delightful conservative pundit Mona Charen wrote a nationally syndicated column about "academic bullies" entitled Lunatics are running the Asylum. The ideological assault on higher education was on. As far as I can tell, pretty much everyone has bought into it.

With Clinton now going around the country waving his own "Yo, Education" pennant, the status -- and value -- of higher education is once again in the news. Hence, the Time story on Gouging U. The author, Erik Larson, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, returned to his alma mater to learn why tuition costs have soared over the past twenty years.

Posing as a "special investigation," this is little more than a multi-page spleen-venting screed, filled with conspiracy theories and faculty-bashing that would make any self-respecting state legislator or member of Congress vote an enthusiastic "thumbs down" on future funding for higher education.

In his first paragraphs, Larson tells us that Penn's wallet-busting tuition ($21,130 -- without room, board, books, or No-doze) "helps cover the annual deficit at its faculty club" and also goes toward "the average $121,000 in compensation that Penn pays its professors."

Huh? Tell that to the junior faculty in the humanities who, even at an Ivy League School like Penn, earn one-third of that. Elsewhere...