It always makes me angry when I see ignorant people mocking science, for example in 
this speech George Bush ridicules the Smithsonian. As they say in the introduction
Bush ridiculed one spending item in the rejected part of the bill, "a new facility for storing the government's collection of bugs and worms." According to the legislation, that money was aimed at reducing a security threat at a Smithsonian Institution museum that keeps specimens in thousands of liters of flammable solution.
But the point that Bush was making was that he believes studying bugs and worms is stupid. Bugs and worms, of course, are among our fiercest competitors for food on the planet and understanding bugs and worms is incredibly important for farmers and the people who depend on the food they produce. Unless you have a comprehensive collection of specimens, you can't even identify what you're looking at, let alone understand it and be able to defend against it. But insects, nematodes, and annelids are also important in many other areas of science which are underappreciated by ignorant people like Bush. Studies of Drosophila and C elegans genetics, for example, have transformed our understanding not just of "bug and worm" genetics, but of our own.
Unfortunately, it isn't just Republicans who make such moronic pronouncements. I remember that Bill Clinton once bashed horseshoe crab research holding it up as a symbol of waste. As it turns out, horseshoe crab blood has a bunch of unique characteristics that make it invaluable for certain kinds of medical and scientific tests.
James Carlin, a former trustee, hates public higher education. The article is filled with vitriolic distortions. Carlin's biggest misunderstanding is his idea that professors are just "teachers". He hates professors because he thinks, since they're only teaching a couple of courses, that they must not be working hard enough. Professors don't just "teach", though. Professors are doing research, writing, and trying to stay at the forefront of their discipline. Just reading all of the important work in most disciplines would be a full time job. Maintaining a balance among teaching, research, and service often requires living a life out of balance, working 60 hour weeks, doing work at all hours of the day and night. If you ask professors to teach an extra course it will simply displace time spent on research and professional development. And, of course, what it will really do, is discourage the best faculty from coming here.
If Carlin hates professors, then he really hates tenure.
Tenure makes our campuses unmanageable. Tenured professors can tell their bosses to "get lost" any time they want, in any manner, on any matter, and there's nothing the institution can do about it.
What Carlin neglects to mention is that faculty are governed, not by "bosses", but by themselves. The faculty of each department is primarily responsible for the operation of the department, hiring, and promotion. Tenured faculty can be removed for reason, but with a significant number of guarantees that the institution can't fire faculty as a arbitrary threat. That's what makes Carlin unhappy: he wants people to feel like the sword of damocles is constantly hanging over their head. Tenure is just a guarantee of due process. Eliminating tenure would require increasing faculty salaries a lot. Unless the real goal is to attract a much lower quality professor than what we have now. Market forces apply here as much as anywhere. If follow Carlin's advice, we'll have a system that costs more and has lower quality faculty. You can't have a great institution without a great faculty.
Carlin complains about the rising tuition and fees, but these increases can be directly attributed to cuts in the base funding by the state. The state is cutting funding because its running a deficit and its running a deficit, not because of anything higher education did, but because the legislature and administration made unrealistic projections regarding the growth of the economy. The budget was providing a surplus until unwise tax cuts were made. At UMass, the faculty is down 40% from what it was in 80's. Is this the fat that Carlin is talking about?
Carlin complains that the faculty and University facilities are only used for 30 weeks out of the year and are underutilized on afternoons and Fridays. For starters, the faculty are only paid for 9 months out of the year. Many faculty depend on the rest of the year to conduct research and perform professional development. More faculty could be hired to keep the University open during the summers, but who is going to take the classes? Many of the students at UMass work during the summer to support their studies.
If you go to other public higher education institutions around the country, you would be hard pressed to find a system that does more with less. UMass has been systematically starved and survives as a quality instiution of higher education only due to the esprit of the faculty. The cuts of the past three years have seriously damaged morale, however, and unless there is a significant reinvestment in the University, I fear for the future.