NOT EVERYONE’S AGAINST PORK: A look at lobbying and higher education:

Colleges and universities and others with a direct interest in higher education — including associations, accrediting groups and lenders — reported spending nearly $94.6 million on lobbying Congress and top executive branch officials in 2005, an Inside Higher Ed analysis shows. That is about $15 million, or 18 percent, more than the $80 million they reported spending in 2004. . . .

But most of the growth in recent years in higher education lobbying – particularly that done by individual colleges and universities – has been in hot pursuit of federal earmarks, known popularly by the less generous term of pork barrel projects. Institutions that hire outside firms to lobby for them, rather than hire their own in-house lobbyists, are almost always primarily seeking earmarks, says Savage of UVa, because “private firms are all about earmarking.”

How noble.