The perfect job?

Michigan universities paid more than 500 professors $23.2 million to be absent from the classroom during the 2004-05 school year, even as the state's economy nosedived and parents and students struggled to pay double-digit tuition hikes. This was the lead line of the Detroit News Sunday Edition.

Why do collage professors need paid sabbaticals?

Proponents state that paid time off is intended for research, expanding skills and recharging mental batteries -- in ways that benefit universities and students.

Critics question the value of sabbaticals as college affordability recedes and professors already are relieved of many routine tasks by graduate students and other assistants. "Why do people in higher ed have to recharge their batteries when people almost nowhere else in the world recharge them?" asked Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University and author of the book, "Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much."

I, like most of you don't have the opportunity to have a job that pays for taking a sabbatical. Why should collage professors that have Teachers Assistants teach their class?