GO (TO HELL) BLUE!

The University of Michigan, a once-great state university that touted itself as "the Harvard of the Midwest," hasn't been a great university in many years.  It long ago gave up on excellence in education, and chose excellence in football.

And now the University of Michigan is ready to pay Jim Harbaugh $8,000,000.00 a year to coach football.  Michigan taxpayers must be cheering loudly!  Hoorah!  Go Blue!

And in Detroit, all the poor people are cheering even more loudly.  They don't have schools or hospitals or adequate police or fire protection, they have no public transport, they have inadequate housing, they have no jobs--but Jim Harbaugh is worth $8,000,000.00 a year at the state-supported university 35 miles away.   You betcha!

The University of Michigan is a state-supported institution.  If the State of Michigan doesn't subtract $8,000,000.00 a year from its contribution to the University of Michigan, the people of the state should be excused from paying state taxes, and students should be excused from paying tuition or fees.

And since the University obviously has an extra $8,000,000.00 a year that it doesn't need for educational purposes, it can use that sum to do away with--or at least radically reduce--student fees and tution.

By the time I left the University of Michigan in 1992--after 26 years as a professor there--the University of Michigan was already a sham.  Now it is a shame.

Why don't all Michigan alumni write to the president of the university--and to the governor of the state?