The ivy tower

The editorial "Put Scholars Before Dollars," April 12, makes a rhetorical pirouette. As a parent and a professor, I am appalled with Yale's $100,000 plus cost for a diploma. But why do you digress from musing about Yale to your statement that "many institutions seem to be run for the benefit of the (often absent) faculty rather than the students?"

You are confusing Ivy league research universities with the rest of us.

As a teacher at a midsize state institution of 18,000 students, we are proud of our faculty-student ratio of 1 to 30 in the history department. Across the nation, faculty members work an average of 57 hours per week by teaching, preparing lectures, grading papers, and counseling and advising students.

If faculty at flagship research institutions are not there to meet classes, and those professors are only climbing higher into the ivory tower with little regard for their students, then I suggest that college students attend regional universities that have a commitment both to teaching and career preparation. Andrew Gulliford,,Murfreesboro, Tenn. Associate Professor and Director Public History & Historic Preservation Program Middle Tennessee State University

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