University CEO Pay

With respect to the previous post ("Is There Anything the Modern University President Won't Do for Money?"), here is a column from Frank Bruni in today's New York Times on the alarming trend of escalating salaries for university presidents.  The huge paycheques and golden parachutes awarded to people like Yale's Richard Levin ($8.5M lump sum retirement nest egg) or Ohio State's E. Gordon Gee ($6M cash-out package) make me wonder what our own fearless leader will take with her when she departs this summer.  By the time we find out, she'll be long gone, and it will be water under the bridge.  But how many times must our BoG throw huge sums of money around for upper administrators, while doing everything they can to screw the rank and file faculty of AASUA before we acknowledge that these people are both incompetent and evil?

Is There Anything the Modern University President Won’t do for Money?

The title to this post is the tag line of Erik Loomis' takedown of NYU for its abysmal labour practices in Abu Dhabi, where it is building a branch campus.  This is the logical outcome of the "internationalization" that we keep hearing about.  In the end, always follow the money.

What's the Point of a Professor

Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, wrote a New York Times op/ed criticizing what he identifies as the deteriorating level of commitment to educational rigour demonstrated by today's faculty members.  It's a fairly fatuous piece, and this retort from Erik Loomis at LGM nicely highlights its deficiencies, including a significant excerpt from a much longer diatribe by the Tattooed Professor.  As they say, read the whole thing.

It Can't Get Much More Blatant than This

Here is an article on the bankruptcy filing of for-profit Corinthian Colleges, outlining the way they used the tuition money paid by duped students (and coming from taxpayer-funded student loans) to influence the political process so as to shut down any enforcement of regulations design to prevent the scams they were permitting.

Question Answered

In response to my previous post, I would say that after last night's rout the answer is a definitive "Yes, yes he should."  The main argument senior University people have implicitly made for cozying up to the PC party is, "They're the only ones who will ever hold power, so we should do what we can to placate them so that they don't nuke our budget."  That worked really well a couple of years ago, didn't it?

Anyway, having publicly rebuked the NDP, Goss now needs to step aside for the good of the University, and let someone who does not have his baggage take over on the BOG.

Should Doug Goss Resign?

Paula Simons raises questions about the appropriateness of Doug Goss' public involvement in yesterday's ooga booga scare story from some local captains of industry regarding the negative impact of electing an NDP government.

I have to agree that this level of political activity is very unseemly in a Chair of the Board of Governors.  He is entitled to his views, but then he should probably step away from his position.