A covenant for funding Nevada higher education

Sometimes the universe aligns just so, allowing an improbable vehicle to shine light on a real truth.

Take this past Monday's Las Vegas Sun.

It featured a story headlined "Tone of budget debate matters," in which the writer allowed two casino executives to anonymously muse on the differences between Dwight Jones, new superintendent of the Clark County School District, and Neal Smatresk, president of UNLV, as they confront potentially deep budget cuts in this legislative session.

It was an odd construct, but it worked to point out that Jones takes the "glass half full" approach and Smatresk takes the "glass half empty" view. The casino execs liked the first approach, therefore it is the better one, the story leads readers to conclude.

Directly underneath that story came an unrelated defense of former Democratic Rep. Dina Titus.

Headlined "College Republicans keep heat on Titus," the story proceeded to tell us how the mean Republican students relentlessly complain about professor Titus' sweetheart job at UNLV, where she's a tenured political science professor.

"Leave her alone," cries the story's subtext. Yes, she took leave from her job one out of every four semesters for umteen years when she was a state senator. Yes, as a UNLV employee, she ran for governor and managed to find a way to lose to Jim Gibbons in 2006. And yes, in 2008, professor Titus broke through to win a seat in U.S. House of Representatives.

But even when she took a more than two-year hiatus to serve in Congress, UNLV couldn't get rid of her. When she lost her re-election bid to Dr. Joe Heck in November, she still had a comfortable job warmed up and waiting for her at UNLV.

She now sucks $100,000-plus per year of UNLV funding to teach one class.

Yet the Sun writer leads us to believe student criticism of this largess is unfair because some of the Republican students are connected to the Heck campaign.

Says Titus: "What disturbs me is I'm not a candidate. I'm not an elected official. I'm a faculty member."

That quote is my early favorite for Disingenuous Statement of the Year. In her entire time at UNLV, when, exactly, has professor Titus not been an elected official or a wanna-be elected official?

So, in these two stories the newspaper unwittingly put its finger on an important element of the budget debate.

Nevada faces a budget crisis. The governor asks higher education to bear a part of the burden.

UNLV says the cuts are too deep and that they will do great damage to the institution's progress.

Yet Titus becomes Exhibit A for how UNLV fails to be a good steward of taxpayer money.

Now, don't get me wrong. Does Nevada play with fire when it toys with sustained funding decreases for higher education? Yes, I believe so.

It's not because, as many argue, it will hamper economic diversification efforts, because Nevada won't have the skilled and educated work force to compete for new businesses. Taxpayers don't fund higher education to attract relocating businesses.

We value higher education because learning is a reward unto itself. It makes better people, a better community and a better nation. And that's an experience that ought not be just for the rich. The average citizen with drive and desire should be able to participate in higher education without being forced into huge debt.

There are no practical job applications to the joys of discovering Shakespeare or Socrates. But there is immeasurable benefit to the next generation stretching to know and understand the wisdom of the ages.

Heaven help us if the study of antiquity for the UNLV freshmen class of 20 years from now becomes "Elvis 101."

But the covenant between taxpayer and higher education must come with a trust of faithful stewardship.

Dina Titus may be one heck of a political science teacher (excuse the pun). And some people may think she hung the moon in her political vision quest. But somebody at UNLV long ago should have revealed to her that she must pick one career or the other.

The days of taxpayers providing a safety net for Ms. Titus (or any elected official) needs to come to an immediate end. Nevadans will go to bat for higher education. But university presidents must also go to bat for taxpayers.

That's the covenant.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@ reviewjournal.com), the former publisher of the Review-Journal and a member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.