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Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Agreed.

How about making the professors work a 40 hour week? I am friends with someone who teaches Sociology at Wesleyan University in CT (we disagree on EVERYTHING). He told me that if he adds up the time he spends preparing lectures, time in class, office hours, and time grading papers, he said it adds up to about 900 hours a year. That's insane.

Also, I was an engineering major, then a math major. Probably a third of the classes I took were the bullsh*t classes like writing, history, sociology, etc. Liberal arts folks will say you "need" those classes to be a better engineer. I reject that, I don't concede I was smarter after taking those classes. If we let kids (at least those with technical majors) take more classes relevent to their major, and fewer liberal arts requirements, kids could graduate in 3 years instead of 4. The liberal arts folks, 99% of whom are liberals, go berserk every time I mention this, because they want guaranteed job security, even though they aren't adding value (IMHO).

There are many things we could do to make it cheaper. Most of those ideas will be rejected by the liberals in academia, because many of the proposals will hit them in the wallet.

I think I now understand you.