Stephen's Untold Stories

I’ve never met Dr. Melvyn Fein, but I’d like to buy him lunch sometime.

The university in which I work has been underfunded for years by the Board of Regents. Our current governor hasn’t been much help at all regarding the entire university system. Dr. Fein weighs in.

As the world has come to learn, Georgia is on the cutting edge of what the United States is becoming. It is leading the way into a new millennium based on innovation, vision and social justice.

But in order to sustain these advances, Georgia requires a university system commensurate with its emerging greatness. Its people must thus support the colleges they have hitherto created and must strengthen them further. Only by moving in this direction can they establish the conditions necessary for sustained economic and social growth.

Unfortunately, Sonny Perdue has not been a higher education governor. The data shows that under his aegis, the university system has been allowed to languish, and indeed to drift backwards. Adequate classrooms have not been built, sufficient faculty members have not been hired, and research has been seriously under-funded.

Nor has the Board of Regents been a statewide board. With its eyes fixed elsewhere, the needs of northwest Georgia have been sadly neglected. Despite our area serving as the primary engine of regional progress, our schools have received less attention than more politically demanding constituencies.

Kennesaw State University, in particular, has been allowed to suffer.

Although it has grown into the state’s third-largest university, it has been asked to function on a budget more suitable for a junior high school. Allocated less money per student than almost every other school in the system, it cannot offer its attendees the courses they deserve because it has neither the space nor the person-power to do so.

Here is the entire letter.