The Journal Sentinel continues to support UW-Milwaukee's engineering land grab (assisted by Milwaukee County and the City Council of Wauwatosa). Apparently university engineering departments are the gold mines of the 21st Century; certainly the corporations who benefit from all the public-supported research and development think so, but why do so many public officials and members of the press concur?
When public dollars are used to support private interests, when university science is used as an "economic engine", what generally tends to happen is the public gets the short end of the stick and nature is threatened with further degradation. Academic scientists pursuing outside grants and private profits end up compromising their independence and science is placed under the power of the rich and powerful. Trying to reinvent the butterfly (for considerable profit) is always fraught with the far more likely possibility of harming the butterflies we already have.
The jobs, if any, that are created by this graduate engineering school and business park will not amount to much, and any businesses that develop on that land may well head for greener, cheaper, hipper pastures as soon as they get the chance. This development of County land will benefit, not the people of Milwaukee County, but the special interests of ambitious administrators, greedy engineers and biotech profiteers.
Add to this the loss of more urban green space and wildlife habitat, the forcing of engineering students to travel to Tosa, the added car traffic in a congested area, and we have the perfect public sell out, an act of unconscionable commerce aided and abetted by a newspaper famous for protecting public money from local politicians and day-care providers.