John Hood makes the excellent point in this column that the best response when universities say they need more money to prevent a disastrous faculty “brain drain” is to yawn.

Specifically, UNC is complaining that it needs more money from North Carolina taxpayers to compete with other schools that want to Pied Piper away a few of UNC’s academic stars. John says, “Big deal — if a few leave, they can easily be replaced.”

Highly paid academic stars help a school’s U.S. News ranking, but they aren’t essential to teaching or research. The supposed “brain drain” has been going on for many years, but where is the evidence that North Carolinians are any worse off because of it? There isn’t any. This is just another ploy to extract money from people through deception.