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Sunday, March 05, 2006
Opportunity Cost The president of one of Florida’s poorest public universities is a pooh-bah. While his students and faculty starve, he lives it way way up. "The opportunity cost of my time is very high,” he explains to the Miami Herald, which wants to know why it’s all limos, four-star hotels and private planes for Modesto “Mitch” Maidique of Florida International University. The opportunity cost of my time is very high. I am a VIP. Everyone wants a piece of me. Every moment of me costs a fortune. I move within a four-star aura. Hence, as to why “in February 2003, Maidique spent $462 to hire a limo for seven hours during the Miami International Film Festival,” he points out that "It was part of the whole patina and the whole style of the film festival" to travel in a Lincoln Town Car with dignitaries. At all times a luxe tone must be maintained. One summer day in 2004, the president of Miami-Dade County's only public university traveled to state Sen. Ken Pruitt's office in Port St. Lucie to lobby for more school funding. He had to take a limo through Connecticut. It’s a jungle out there: In 2003, for a lunch meeting at former FIU board chairman Armando Codina's Connecticut summer home, Maidique spent $474 for a night at the Four Seasons Pierre, a five-star hotel in Manhattan. The opportunity cost of talking to someone in person is so very high. |