Knowledge is good? I beg to differ

Many Pennsylvanians are up in arms about the governor's proposed state budget, especially its massive cuts in funding for state-related universities like Penn State. To these people, I respond with the words of Kevin Bacon in

Animal House

: "Remain calm. All is well. All is well!"

As a recent graduate of Penn State, I applaud Gov. Corbett's fiscal responsibility, the same way I applaud the firebombing of Dresden. But I'm taking a break from my raucous ovation for two reasons. First, my hands hurt. Second, I have a question: Why stop at cutting only 52.4 percent of Penn State's appropriation? There is much more waste than that at the university.

For starters, let's lose the professors. We've been paying them pretty handsomely for the past few decades, and, I'll admit, they've come up with a few decent ideas. So why not just coast for a while based on what we've learned so far? So what if we never develop cold fusion or invent the hoverboard? I know it's tough to accept, but life will go on without hoverboards.

Sure, some naysayers will claim that we need professors to teach students. But those people are forgetting about Wikipedia.

After we've trimmed the payroll, we can make equally large cuts to the course offerings at Penn State. Already, the agricultural college could lose half of its 440 employees, Hershey Medical Center's funding is expected to be eliminated, and some branch campuses face the possibility of closure. This is a great start! But where else can we shed a few educational pounds?

The math department, for one, is full of excesses. It should stick to a core curriculum of ballpark estimates and lose all the complicated stuff. And it goes without saying that the entire English department is useless. The anthropology department, meanwhile, could be replaced by a single episode of Jersey Shore. And geography will be unnecessary after we download Google Earth.

Done, done, and done. You can thank me later, Pennsylvania taxpayers.

Finally, the biggest waste of all is Penn State's students. The university is simply producing too many college graduates demanding high salaries that employers can't afford. All this higher education is unfair to business!

Fortunately, Corbett's cuts will likely result in tuition increases, pricing out more applicants. With fewer college graduates in the workforce, the business community will be able to save some money by paying lower salaries to underqualified employees who have no right to expect better.

Some readers may think the governor and I are misguided and shortsighted in our support for huge reductions in university funding. To which I respond by once again quoting that higher-education epic, Animal House: "I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." And "We're just the guys to do it."