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Sunday, November 20, 2005

A Mote it is to trouble the mind's eye …

…as it muses upon a world of overpaid university presidents:


“The first rule of being a president is never redecorate,” explains President Dan Mote of the University of Maryland, where he controls a billion dollar budget but “drives a 1998 Ford Crown Royal and works in a 50-year-old building with lots of problems,” a campus reporter notes. “Simply put, [the administration] buildings are old. Since being built more than 50 years ago, the pipes leak, the paint smells funny and the staircases resemble echoing psychiatric wards.”

Flecks from the paint seem to have made Mote mad. Listen to him rant!

“The administration building has to be functional ... but not too fancy and especially not new… If I was to put resources into buildings, they should be for labs and academic buildings. I think my office is nice.”

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UPDATE: David Foster, at Photon Courier, blogged a few months back on a related subject:



THE EDIFICE CLUE

Here's an unusual but intriguing approach to making investment decisions--specifically, deciding which companies in which not to invest. In Fortune (12/22), Donald Sull of Harvard Business School has this to say: "If I see a big, spanking-new headquarters, the stock's a sell. There's just too much shareholder cash sloshing around." He specifically cautions investors against companies possessing any of the following in their new headquarters: an architectural award for design, a waterfall in the lobby, or a heliport on the roof. When such things make their appearance, Sull believes, "Management is saying, 'We've declared victory, and now we're building a huge monument to our victory.' "
Posted at: 11/20/2005 01:47:00 AM