We all are aware of the ballooning costs of higher education in our great nation. In any self-respecting democracy, education should always be treated as a commodity, offered on the open market and subject to the economic laws of supply and demand. One of the fundamental principles of laissez-faire capitalism is the inalienable right to gouge the consumer by charging more for an inferior product.
As always, unhinged free market greed has produced, in America, one of the most spectacular educational freefalls in the world. According to the United Nations’ Human Development Index, since 2006, the return on educational investment in the United States has dropped from a leading position of number 1 to number 21; and it continues to fall. Not surprisingly costs continue to skyrocket. This is a formidable example of the benefits of unrestrained capitalism.
Alas, some institutions of higher learning are not satisfied with simply ripping off the future of the United States in their quest for profits. In a revolutionary new entrepreneurial act, Florida State University has placed its Department of Economics on the auction block. In an unprecedented act of unfettered greed, FSU has sold to the billionaire Koch Brothers the exclusive right to choose the faculty members that it can employ to spread the beneficial, but toxic, principles of disaster capitalism.
One would think that the ability to bribe, I mean, aid a prestigious university to choose faculty members would be prohibitively expensive. But NO!!! FSU sold off its impartiality and independence for the paltry sum of $1,500,000!! This bargain basement sale makes me wonder if there is anybody manning the controls in the Economics Department of FSU.