Maureen – here’s a link to the meal plan info. It calls them “mandatory” and has a separate line for commuting students. My daughter just graduated from there, and my son is about to start – she told him and he told me, and I just didn’t believe it until I saw it with my own two eyes!

If anything, the folks in Georgia’s system might want to up their game for while, cause it looks like there might be some recently laid off competition coming our way from some excellent higher ed systems who are worse off than we are.

Here are some links:
CSU, the largest U.S. four-year university system with 450,000 students, plans to cut enrollment by 40,000 over the next two years. Nearly all 47,000 employees have agreed to take furloughs two days per month, and fees for in-state undergraduates will rise 32 percent to $4,827 a year. http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/ap/52537182.html

Syracuse University budget cuts costs, freezes many salaries. by Nancy Cole / The Post-Standard. Wednesday March 04, 2009, 6:24 AM. What’s new …
http://www.syracuse.com/…/syracuse_university_budget_cut.html

Arizona State University – Budget cuts
Feb 10, 2009 … No university, no public institution, no corporation, no individual can sustain the drastic budget cuts we have taken without reducing its …www.asu.edu/budgetcuts/

Trustees approve budget cuts to safeguard strength of Cornell. http://www.cornell.edu/president/statements/2009/20090125-fy2009-budget.cfm

Chancellor Holden Thorp has UNC to prepare for a $60 million cut to University funding. http://universityrelations.unc.edu/budget/documents/2009/campusbudgetupdate070109.pdf

UVA braces for additional budget cuts up to $19 million

Casteen says layoffs only “after all rational and all other remedies have failed”
http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=141404064432695&ShowArticle_ID=11801307090442022

The fact is, there is a huge pool of highly intelligent, enthusiastic, unemployed and underemployed academics out there to draw on if professors decide to leave GA, and there is no reason to believe that because these PhDs are underemployed and/or young and inexperienced doesn’t mean they represent mediocrity. We were all young and inexperienced once.

I think GA will be fine without the few professors who decide to leave in a snit because they have been asked to help GA make it through this pretty major economic downturn by taking a few days of furlough along with every other state employee. If you want to pretend that those professors are irreplaceable or somehow of such incredible value to the state that they should be exempt from the furloughs for fear we will lose them, well, go ahead and be silly. The rest of us are unimpressed. It sounds to me like you might be one of these disgruntled primadonnas. If you are, and you want to leave, please go. We’ll be fine.

It’s true that the weather is a draw, but it can only enhance what GA has to offer, not serve as the base. Most academics look at the nature of the position first when considering job opportunities.

The reality is there are plenty of sorry educators working in GA colleges and plenty of really wonderful educators working as well, but there are also plenty of great educators working part time at McDonald’s at night and teaching part time one or two classes a semester. If the “better educators” leave, they will be replaced–some by great educators, some by new educators who will one day be great–but they will certainly be replaced by someone with a better attitude who is grateful to have a great job, with excellent benefits, time for research (on GA’s dime) and a classroom of his or her own.

As for the “better educators” who leave GA collegs now because of this economy, I say good riddance. Good luck finding a better deal elsewhere until the recession turns around.