Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett is proposing massive cuts to the state's higher education system in his budget proposal, including reducing aid to colleges and universities by 50 percent. But! And this is important! Six lucky colleges and universities in the Pennsylvania higher education system, Corbett says, have an easy way of making up that difference: Open the campuses to natural gas drilling, because there's a fucking goldmine under College Green.

Just give those work-study kids some powerful shale-blasting water guns, and you're all set:

EDINBORO, Pa. (AP) - Some Pennsylvania universities should consider drilling for natural gas below campus to help solve their financial problems, Gov. Tom Corbett said Thursday.

Corbett said six of the 14 campuses in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education are located on the Marcellus Shale formation, part of a vast region of underground natural gas deposits that are currently being explored and extracted.

This form of natural gas extraction is famous nowadays for leaving poison and misery everywhere if the industry isn't carefully regulated. And Pennsylvania law, according to the AP, "still allows hundreds of millions of gallons of the partially treated drilling wastewater to be discharged into rivers from which communities draw drinking water."

In other words, everyone wins. Pennsylvania taxpayers don't have to cover as much in higher education costs, energy companies find new sources of wealth and expand employment, and bratty college kids all get poisoned.

[Image of Gov. Tom Corbett via AP]