It's on: Chancellor Rogers vs. Jim Calhoun
Well at least it should be. For those who've missed it: In the last week, Nevada System of Higher Education Chancellor Jim Rogers wrote an editorial, described by the RJ as, among other things, shrill, attacking Gov. Gibbons, and UConn's men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun shouted down a reporter. The second one is funny; the first, well, not so much.
But the real question is who would win a shouting/cage match between Chancellor Rogers and Coach Calhoun.
Who wouldn't pay to see that? And since we're in Nevada, you can be sure the gambling—and resulting tax dollars—would flow as well. Maybe that's something Chancellor Rogers can arrange, instead of, say, threatening suicide.
The more serious point is this: Forty-six states, including Nevada, are facing budget shortfalls. (Calhoun's outburst was the result of a question about Conneticut's $2 billion shortfall.)
Salon.com reports that, "According to the CBPP (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), 32 states were cutting or planned to cut higher education."
Don't buy into the rhetoric that cuts to higher education are going to destroy it in Nevada or in 31 other states. As the University of Texas at Austin, the last 50 years of K-12 education and NPRI's latest study demonstrate, funding is not correlated with results.
