The University of Tennessee may have "misled" some Tennessee State Legislators about the cost and the status of its biofuel initiative:
Some state legislators said Wednesday they may have been misled in approving $70 million for the University of Tennessee’s Biofuels Initiative and questioned whether taxpayers should continue to underwrite the costs.
The Fiscal Review Committee, a joint House-Senate panel that oversees state spending, voted after hearing a report on the project to delay its approval of an amendment to a contract on operation of the facility that involves about $11 million of the funding.
“This disappoints me more than anything I’ve heard in eight years at the Legislature,” said Rep. Eddie Yokley, D-Greeneville. “We bought this on the assumption that we had the facts showing this would work.”
“I’m absolutely crestfallen. … This is absolutely not good stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Tony Shipley, R-Kingsport.
In a time of deep recession-some would say (as I have in this space) that we are in a depression, the University of Tennessee has conducted itself as though it is immune from the impact of that depression and it is entitled to endless infusions of taxpayer dollars for projects which are not of immediate necessity. All the while, UT increases tuition on a semi-regular basis and now makes students pay for football games (and if I am not mistaken, students still must pay their student activities fee) while begging the State for more and more money.
Support for higher education is extremely important in the day and age in which we live, so no Tennessean should have a problem with ample taxpayer support for the UT system in all areas where that support is necessary to maintain a quality educational experience. I would go so far as to argue that the money wasted on the Governor's pre-K program would have been much better spent in the areas of secondary and higher education, with no small amount going to the University of Tennessee system. Research is also important in any university, but the priority of that research should focus first on educating the ignorant-in other words, most of a university's research should be centered on learning new things and passing that knowledge on to students, having students participate at all times and in all situations that are possible for them to do so.
Officials at UT seem to have forgotten that they do not run the Tennessee Research Lab, but the University of Tennessee. Universities are supposed to be places whose primary mission is to educate and instruct, not waste taxpayer money on projects of questionable worth of no real benefit to the students supposedly being served by the university. If the rest of the people of this State need to eschew extravagance in these most difficult times, our flagship university should be seen in no different light.
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