Corbett Proposes Budget Solutions for Higher Education

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has been urging various state universities to consider shale drilling to help them with their expected budget cuts. “Look, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and I thought, what better egg to break than higher education, so these cuts are pretty significant, I mean, not enough people in academia vote for me anyway and the students don’t care, so we may as well drill.”



Under the current law, however, any royalties from said drilling would go to the state’s Oil and Gas Lease fund and not the University. When questioned about this, Corbett shrugged and threw a candy bar wrapper on the ground, “Details, details! I mean come on, look at all this land, sure some people see a preserved nature-esque campus ideal for scholarly pursuit, but me, I see dollar signs baby!”



Governor Corbett went on to give further suggestions for Universities to seek out revenue in light of his proposed budget cuts, “Start a garden, you could grow all kinds of crops and sell them at wholesale, have the students tend to them so then you won’t even have to pay for the labor, give them internship credit or something.” Gov. Corbett did indicate, however, that school must come first. “Oh, definitely, I mean we only want the best for these kids and the awesome job market they’re getting into, so unless your GPA is above a 1.7 you won’t get the opportunity to work in these campus gardens.”

Other revenue-building suggestions from the Governor included leasing out campus land for mini-landfills, eliminating all student and employee benefits, and holding volunteer bake sales. He even offered to rent space on campus for his campaign office. “We’ll transform a place on campus that’s pretty much useless, you know, like a library or something.”



Before leaving Corbett once again emphasized drilling. “There’s no reason not to, we should totally drill, it’ll be safe, I’ve got a whole committee overseeing all of this,” he added, “a few of them even have environmental backgrounds.”