Source:
Pittsburgh Post GazetteCorbett: Colleges facing cuts should consider drilling
Thursday, April 28, 2011
EDINBORO, Pa. -- Some Pennsylvania universities should consider drilling for natural gas below campus to help solve their financial problems, Gov. Tom Corbett said today.
Corbett said six of the 14 campuses in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education are located on the Marcellus Shale formation, part of a vast region of underground natural gas deposits that are currently being explored and extracted.
The Republican governor's proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts in July would cut $2 billion from education and reduce aid to colleges and universities by 50 percent. The newspaper said Corbett emphasized the cuts are only proposals and that funding for education could change as he negotiates the budget with state lawmakers.
The Marcellus Shale formation lies primarily beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio; Pennsylvania, however, is the center of activity, with more than 2,000 wells drilled in the past three years and many thousands more planned.
Read more:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11118/1142658-100.stm#ixzz1Ks3SZXZY
Corbett's educational history may explain his vicious slashing (50%) from state universities' budgets.
Tom Corbett, R: BA, Lebanon Valley College; JD, St. Mary's School of Law (Texas)
Official biographies state: "Tom Corbett received his undergraduate degree from Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, and taught civics and history in Pine Grove Area High School in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania." Years of graduation are not given.
According to Wikipedia: Early history of Lebanon Valley College
"The College was founded by and initially associated with the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Today, Lebanon Valley College is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, which happened through a series of church mergers: The Church of the United Brethren in Christ merged with the Evangelical Synod of North America in 1946 creating the Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB), which subsequently merged with the Methodist Church in 1968 to create the United Methodist Church. The ties to the Methodist Church are not as strong as they once were, which is evidenced by the lack of mandatory chapel services, but the church maintains a presence on the campus. Out of 34 colleges and academies founded by the United Brethren in Christ Church, Lebanon Valley was one of four to survive."
Corbett, born in 1949,would have done an undergrad degree approximately 1967 - 1971. What is quite puzzling is that Corbett's family is Roman Catholic and was living in suburban Pittsburgh when he finished high school and started college at this little-known school on the other side of the state (around 1600 total enrollment). When he started there, it would have been affiliated with the United Brethren in Christ Church. A year later when there was a merger of churches, it became affiliated with the Methodist Church. During Corbett's years there, there were mandatory chapel services. This would be anathema to a practicing Catholic. Back then we were still being told we could not even attend a relative's wedding or funeral in a non-Catholic church, let alone attend regular worship services. So there are some unexplained bumps under the rug, so to speak, as to why he attended a tiny, private, out of the way, religious but non-Catholic college. Definitely not in the GOP tradition. Other recent PA Republican governors had degrees from Harvard or Yale
After graduating from this small school, the best job he could get was teaching 9th grade for one year before going all the way to Texas to a bottom ranked, private, (i.e, a damned sight more expensive than in state tuition at Pitt) law school. For the same or MUCH less tuition he could have attended Pitt, Duquesne, Dickinson or Temple law schools. He could have lived at home and attended Pitt or Duquesne. Unless of course, he was turned down by them. I think he was not accepted to any of them right after college and it took him another year of searching to find a law school which WOULD accept him.
GETTING TURNED DOWN TO ATTEND PITT, PENN STATE OR OTHER STATE RELATED COLLEGES AND LAW SCHOOLS WOULD CERTAINLY EXPLAIN HIS VICIOUS, UNPRECEDENTED SLASHING OF THEIR BUDGETS, WOULDN'T IT? Perhaps for Governor Corbett, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold! And now he can add icing to his revenge cake by telling them to destroy their campuses by letting the frackers come in and destroy the water and air quality!
The received wisdom in the legal profession is that you attend law school in the state in which you hope to practice law or run for office, unless you are bright enough or connected enough to get admitted to one of the top 10 or so law schools, which have national prestige.
A very reasonable explanation for why he went to the schools he did is that he couldn't get accepted at higher ranked and less expensive colleges or law schools. When he went to St. Mary's, it was a 4th tier (bottom of the barrel) ranked law school. It remains so. St. Mary's law grads have trouble even getting jobs in the school's hometown, San Antonio, let alone elsewhere in Texas, let alone in other states.
Everyone always wanted to see Bush's Yale transcripts. I would love to see Corbett's transcripts from high school on.
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