Counter with a 12% cut and ObamaCare only.

Oh, and pass the popcorn.

This country is becoming overrun with takers. Faculty have a fairly easy job. In this economy, it is not worth even 6%. I would offer them 0% until the budget can even think about an increase. ww

Cut their pay and let them quit if they don't like it. There are plenty of unemployed PhDs that can replace the profs that don't like the deal the state is offering.

It's a hard job to retrain those PhDs to be able to say "Do you want fries with that?", but someone has to do it.

Easy job doesn't even approach describing it. My brother is a tenured professor. He only really works half the year. He has spent years avoiding any administrative appointment (Dean) because that would actually entail work. He's a professor of physics yet finds 100's of hours per year to write software for his digital camera so he can enhance his wildlife photography.

He and his wife are the typical liberal elite. The rich don't pay enough taxes, just don't ask them to pay any more. The rest of the country is too ignorant to understand the enlightened positions they hold. For educated people they are remarkably naive and unfamiliar with the working world.

Give them a 20% pay cut and call it a targeted tax hike and abolish public sector worker unions in the state.

A superb "test case" for newly empowered republicans. Will they bend over, "cross the aisle" and betray voters like their Washington, DC super-RINO counterparts? Or will they take a stand against leftist faculty members who have nothing but contempt for them anyway, reward voters who put them in office and take the first step towards re-election and more importantly, doing what they were put in office for in the first place. We'll find out pretty soon. And Jay Tea is absolutely right...these people are on probation. Each vote can mean life or death to their chances next time around.

We already know they're unionized, does NH have binding arbitration as well? If so, you're screwed.

A ridiculous demand calls for a ridiculous response, like a quote from the movie Ghostbusters:

"Personally, I liked working for the university! They gave us money and facilities. We didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector... they expect results!"

And that demonstrates the key philosophical flaw of every pointy head academic living in the la-la land of liberal ivory towers: a belief that they're entitled to all that money which grows on your trees. You rubes in fly over country simply need to harvest faster!

And that's when the Iron Lady sings:

"The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

Higher education, indeed.