All my adult life has been spent in teaching at the college level. It has been a challenging and exciting experience. I would wish that every person could have spent their lives interacting with the quality of people that has been my privilege, both in and out of the classroom, for the past thirty-eight years. My years of teaching have not been tremendously rewarding financially but they have emotionally and intellectually. I chose my profession and the particular discipline within it. So, I accept the fact that financially I am not as well off as I might have been had I made other career choices. Still, that does not mean I have always been satisfied with the circumstances in which I have had to teach. It has always bothered me how the Tennessee public claims to be so proud of our education system yet so often treats it like an unwanted child when it comes to funding. It has bothered me that we have a state tax system which ignores the reality of the times in which we live. I do not know how often I have read or heard where a state legislator has bemoaned the current state tax system and said if we could start over we would never create the one we have. Yet, do they make the necessary effort to fix it? We say we want the brightest in education in the classroom and yet we are willing all too often to put teachers before students who are not certified in what they teach. We have as our state motto “Tennessee - the best America has to offer.” But so often you get the impression the reference is to a football or basketball team and not the quality of our environment or the average level of education. I could go on with other concerns but those who are likely to read this column know what they are. And, I guess being in higher education my comments should be reserved to what bothers me there. In many ways we are our own worse enemy. We duplicate programs, have too many remedial classes at senior colleges, continue to offer majors or courses which may not be justified by enrollment and have bureaucratic structures that could possibly be eliminated without taking away greatly from the quality of classroom teaching. Governor Don Sundquist had a blue-ribbon commission study higher education in Tennessee. They came up with a good size list of recommendations that in their totality would have saved the state a sizable amount of money. How many were implemented? Few. The reality was and is that many such recommendations in higher education and other areas of Tennessee government look good on paper but are not politically feasible, such as eliminating the UT Board of Trustees and the State Board of Regents and replacing them with one higher education body, which at the same time would render the Tennessee Higher Education Commission unnecessary. No doubt this could save money. Is it doable? Georgia, with a higher education system similar to ours, has done it. But will it happen in Tennessee? Not likely. And, I am not advocating. I am just pointing out that saving money is more than sitting around a table in a room and conjuring up ideas. We in the public higher education profession in Tennessee in recent years have not fared well with the legislature. Students have not either. They have seen their tuition nearly double in the last six years. Yet, we pay our college administrators fairly well. We do so on the argument that you have to pay the going price to get good ones. However, when we get to the faculty and staff that argument seems to disappear and is replaced by the question, “How little can we get by with paying them?” UT President John Shumaker recently gave the chancellors at his system schools in Chattanooga, Martin and Memphis sizable salary increases with the justification he was trying to just bring them up to the southeast average. No mention was made of the need to do the same for teachers or staff. Then, he pledged to the state legislature and governor that UT would not whine as we watched our education budgets cut, instead we would obediently tighten our belts and do our part. Well, some feel that in light of the recent administrative raises he made that is kind of like shutting the gate after the cattle are out. I guess if I was one of the highest paid administrators in higher education in the nation, as President Schumaker is, I could obediently be willing to do my part. But, I am not. So, while President Schumaker may keep his whining to himself, I will continue to exhort, complain and lobby to my legislators. And, I will not cease to remind the students I teach in my Tennessee government class how inadequate and unequal our state tax system is and the cost that we may pay in future economic development if we do not have an adequately trained work force. Too, I will point out to them how my state senator has said that rural West Tennessee is becoming a wasteland due to factories leaving the area and note to them how Governing magazine has recently declared our state tax system as among the worst. If doing so is seen by some as being uppity and disloyal to our state leaders or public relations then so be it. Dr. Richard Chesteen is a professor of Political Science at UTM.