For instance, federal auditors may lack sufficient understanding of the complicated technical specialties being evaluated to assess research needs accurately. Momentum is building in Congress for withdrawing federal funds from research facilities where there are any indications of drug abuse. The move comes partially in response to complaints from commercial businesses that such services as computer sales by college stores and discounted overseas tours for campus groups compete unfairly with comparable offerings by private companies. And they are likely to encourage still further challenges to the tax status of other traditionally non-taxed operations that historically have been crucial to the financial viability of colleges and universities. Each of these actions is different.
None is frivolous.
Each seeks to address some real concern that has been expressed about some problem of higher education. And each has elicited serious objections from thoughtful people. In each case, money is the key point - money given, lent, guaranteed or laid claim to by the federal government. And coming as it does in the wake of the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which greatly expanded the ability of the federal bureaucracy to withdraw funding as an enforcement weapon, this pattern demonstrates the logic that underlies government and impels it constantly to seek to extend its authority. It, like Grove City College in Pennsylvania, has never accepted any federal funds.