Funding of higher education in the U.S.

As a placeholder until I can get my head above the beginning-of-the-semester water and catch my breath, here's a link to an interesting video of a lecture on the funding of higher education given by my friend Michael McLendon, Associate Dean and Chief of Staff and Associate Professor of Public Policy and Higher Education at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. I couldn't have said it any better. Well, maybe just a tad.

And by the way, for those of you who were wondering -- still no budget in Pennsylvania, now two full months into the fiscal year.

Pennsylvania Held Hostage - Day 42

We're now 11 days into August, and still no budget for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That means that Penn State and the other public universities still have no clue what their appropriation for the year will be -- and in our case, at Penn State, this is with only 13 days until classes start.

It's becoming almost comical, what Philly Inquirer columnist Karen Heller (no relation) calls a "tour-de-farce." The state has passed a stopgap bill to ensure that state workers in critical departments (obviously a definition subject to much discussion) are at least now receiving a paycheck, yet 255 other state employees are receiving layoff notices. Hard to tell whether Governor Rendell and the legislature are any closer to agreeing on how to bail the Commonwealth out of its budget mess. Latest figurs show the two parties still about $2 billion apart. Stay tuned for further updates.