[University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim] Calhoun pointing to the amount of income UConn men’s basketball generates for the university exemplifies a capitalist society: The market defines the worth.

Got it, baby? Can we make it even simpler?

At a university, market value = worth.

Okay?

So shut up about Calhoun.

… and, as always, it’s based on greed and invidiousness rather than a sense of duty to the institution.

The university’s president refuses a pay cut, because “My compensation ranks 93 out of 151 public universities for which we have data for faculty and presidents,” Fogel said. “I think that should be well understood…”

Et alors? And if he were 151st? Why is a university president keeping score of this? Are his children in tatters? The man’s been rewarding other administrators, too, even as he’s cutting lecturers and stripping the school of other goods.

The governor has taken note of Fogel’s score-keeping ways.

… While state lawmakers, including Gov. Jim Douglas, have agreed to a 5 percent cut in salary due to tough economic times, Fogel refuses.

Douglas commented on Fogel’s refusal to take a pay cut Thursday in Montpelier. “I think I did the right thing. My team did. The judiciary did. It’s important to make some tough decisions in challenging times. I don’t want to tell him what to do, but I’m sure he’ll look at all the options,” Douglas said Thursday.

******************

Update: Far as UD can make out, Fogel’s salary is around $500,000 (I assume this doesn’t include the many perks university presidents get).

President Fogel needs to make an effort to think about his compensation in the same terms he’s asked his students to adopt by way of thinking about their lives. Do not follow the crowd. Do not judge your worth in extrinsic terms; try thinking in intrinsic terms. Do not be a cynic, as Oscar Wilde said, who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And so on and so on.

I would ask President Fogel to think about the actuality of what he and his university have been telling students – teaching students – for generations.

An emeritus professor of geography brings us up to the present in a letter to the editor of the Daily Egyptian:

Things at SIUC have come to a sorry pass, with multiple changes in top leadership over just a few years, plagiarism charges being bandied about and now, with SIUC proceeding full speed ahead with the “Saluki Way” super athletic facility on the south end of campus while the Carbondale City Council pledges $1 million each year for 20 years without a referendum to gauge public opinion. And almost half of Saluki Way will be paid for by SIUC students, whether they are “fans” or not…

Sure, the quotation marks around fans are weird. Otherwise, this summary of things at America’s most benighted university is terrific, with appropriate emphasis on the crowning idiocy of Saluki Way (which also doesn’t need quotation marks).

The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon handed hundreds of millions of dollars over to money managers who pocketed it.

Florida is a rogue state. Rules are meant to be broken.

You see it at Florida’s universities.

An immigrant from a non-rogue state – Bernie Machen, president of the University of Florida – has come in and sort of tried to clean up, but he can’t. Florida’s rogue all the way down.

Note Machen’s pathetic emails in the latest corruption scandal on his campus.

Good man. But pathetic.

The University of Florida is investigating cases in which College of Medicine administrators used a state program to retire and then be rehired without searches for other candidates – receiving perks such as bonuses and raises in the process.

UF President Bernie Machen said he has pushed to end abuses of the Deferred Retirement Option Program, known as DROP, but the allegations and 20 other cases suggest the effort has seen mixed success. The program is intended to provide incentives for long-time public employees to retire, clearing the way for lower-paid replacements.

… A provision in state law allows employees to get payouts that can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars to retire and then return to work while collecting both salaries and pensions, a practice called double-dipping. The loophole has been used by an increasing number of public employees across the state.

Double-dipping is legal, but the law requires employees to take time off between their retirement and return to work. UF policy requires competitive searches for most faculty and staff positions. UF also has enacted rules intended to stop employees from making pre-retirement agreements to be re-employed, which can be costly at a time of budget cuts and layoffs.

The investigation follows claims made by former UF College of Medicine Dean Dr. Bruce Kone in letters sent to university and state officials. Using e-mail and other public records, Kone claimed administrators made agreements to be rehired without searches, in some cases without taking time off and being given other perks.

UF officials confirmed investigations are ongoing, but would not provide any details. Machen declined to comment on specific allegations but a 2007 e-mail showed he referred to one such agreement as “a prostitution of the University.”

… In one case, UF Jacksonville campus Dean Robert Nuss received a $150,000 lump-sum payment from DROP to retire in 2004, according to Florida Department of Management Services records. Kone alleged that UF waived search requirements before rehiring Nuss and also gave him a bonus of nearly $25,500 to offset retirement benefits that he missed under DROP rules.

He now gets a university salary of $385,000 while also receiving about $2,600 in monthly retirement benefits, state records show. Nuss did not respond to requests for comment.

… “These are the same universities that come to the Legislature with their hands out and say we don’t give them enough money,” said state Sen. Mike Fasano, a New Port Richey Republican seeking to change the practice.

… Machen said that when he started in 2004, he found that some employees had made pre-retirement arrangements to be re-employed. He said he first directed such arrangements to be eliminated for senior administrators

A campus-wide memo sent in 2005 warned all employees that the arrangements could put their benefits at risk. UF received ambiguous state advice on the legality of such arrangements, Machen said, but he viewed such deals as bad policy.

… [P]hysician and administrator Dr. Nicholas Cassisi retired in June 30, 2003, and was rehired a month later at his pre-retirement salary of $435,937.

In a 2002 letter, former College of Medicine Dean Craig Tisher requested that all recruiting and affirmative action requirements for the position be waived.

State records show Cassisi received a lump sum of more than $90,000 from DROP and about $1,600 in monthly retirement benefits.

… An e-mail from Machen showed that UF’s president took issue with a pre-retirement agreement involving an endowed professorship.

In the Nov. 25, 2007, e-mail, Machen referred to the agreement with former Senior Associate Dean for Educational Affairs Dr. Robert Watson as “a prostitution of the University” and “one of the worst abuses of non-profit status I have ever seen.”

“Shame on everyone involved,” he wrote…

UD thanks a reader for the link.

… provides a way into the latest report on overpaid university personnel.

“When you have college presidents making $1 million, you’re going to have $800,000 provosts and $500,000 deans,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. “It may be reasonable for these people to be well paid, but if faculty’s getting 2 percent raises, I don’t see why senior administrators who are already high-paid should get much larger increases. It reflects a set of values that is not the way most Americans think of higher education.”

If Alabama’s Coach Saban makes four million, all other university coaches expect their salaries to bump up. If Wall Street money managers make thirty-five million, Harvard’s money managers make thirty-five million. If the university’s president makes a million, provosts make close to a million.

And what sort of fool would make an issue of it? The market’s everywhere, including the university, and the only compensation mechanism in play is what other people are making, or what an employee could earn elsewhere…

But what’s that thing at the end of Callan’s statement about a set of values at odds with higher education? What the fuck is that?

Hell I dunno… He probably means like, uh, people think people at universities are motivated by things other than greed.

Whatever. That’s a dead end.

But hey what about this. What about this whole universities-are-non-profits thing.

Why do universities get spectacular tax breaks and other advantages for-profits don’t get?

Well, because our government thinks people at universities are motivated by things other than greed. Public good, you know. Universities are more into educating people than they are into raking in money. The government thinks this is great, and through excellent tax breaks encourages universities in their commitment to this civic activity.

For instance, as Charles Grassley notes:

Donations to colleges are tax deductible. Taxpayers pay for federal tax incentives to make higher education more accessible and affordable through college-savings plans and tax deductions for tuition and student-loan interest. Such tax credits and deductions cost U.S. taxpayers about $17 billion a year.

Universities are obligated to use this special tax status for maximum fulfillment of their charitable purpose of educating students. And Congress is obligated to make sure such tax policies are working as intended.

That’s just one way in which universities are extremely special when it comes to money – money the government gives them, money benefactors give them. As non-profits with a civic mission, universities get that money with the understanding that they’ll use it responsibly, to educate Americans.

Or think about it in terms of tuition. American parents pay immense sums in tuition. I don’t think they go into debt saying This is okay, because it will provide the provost with a fifteen percent raise this year. I worried, when the provost was only making $500,000, that the quality of our daughter’s education would be compromised.

So. If you think the university is a market creature like anything else, and your administration’s all set up to keep feeding the creature, then eventually the rest of Congress will see what Charles Grassley’s getting at, and they’ll begin to remove various tax and other advantages.

Sure, they will only start seeing it in the larger context of a collapsing economy, where disproportionate reward suddenly jumps out at everyone. But they will see it, and, depending on how self-serving your university has been, you can expect to attract some attention.

… makes such an enormous salary.

It’s a tough job, presiding over a university’s decline, but someone’s got to do it.

Aren’t students and faculty at George Mason University angry enough at their president?

But, on the other hand, shouldn’t everyone know the full picture?

… to take off the top of his convertible. UD was wowed by the crowds of immense palm trees on campus.

Like almost every other university, Miami’s starting to have serious money troubles.

When you turn your university into a dumping ground for political hacks, not to mention a source of money for your kid, you can expect things to get ugly eventually.

Especially when your BFF, Rod Blagojevich, can no longer watch your back.

Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard said Thursday anyone with evidence of “pay-to-play politics” involved in appointments to the school’s Board of Trustees should contact the proper authorities.

Questions have arisen in public surrounding financial contributions to legally embattled former Gov. Rod Blagojevich by board members including Chairman Roger Tedrick, a Mount Vernon insurance agent; John Simmons, an attorney from Alton; and F. William Bonan II, regional president of Peoples National Bank in Mount Vernon.

… [One speaker] raised the claim of a $4 million state contribution for the construction of Rent One Park in Marion, the home stadium of the Southern Illinois Miners, a professional baseball team owned by Simmons.

Poshard, who worked with Simmons and his son, Dennis Poshard, to bring the team to the region, said the money was given to the city of Marion for infrastructure developments, not specifically the ball club.

Dennis Poshard was involved in other of Wright’s allegations, including that the Arthur Agency, of which Dennis Poshard is president, received contracts for work from the university.

Poshard acknowledged the work his son’s company has done for the university, but said it was all handled properly. For companies affiliated with university administrators and board members, policies and procedures for bidding are stricter than for general bid awards, Poshard said.

Documents from the March 2007 board meeting show a $100,000 payment to the Arthur Agency for marketing services for CONNECT SI….

Background on Poshard, who plagiarized his dissertation, here.

… putting photographs of, say, the governor, in every public university classroom would be a bad idea.

But putting, say, crucifixes in every Catholic university classroom doesn’t seem strange. Private schools, founded on and still devoted to a certain creed … Why not?

Yet Boston College, the Jesuit school which produced Harry Markopolos, has run into a bit of trouble along these lines lately.

… [S]uddenly, in all 151 classrooms, there is a Catholic icon, in most cases, a crucifix above the lintel.

Students and faculty returned to campus after winter break to find that Boston College had quietly completed, without announcement or fanfare, an eight-year project to dramatically increase the presence of Roman Catholic religious symbols on campus. The additions are subtle but significant, as the university joins other Catholic institutions around the nation in visibly reclaiming its Catholic identity.

… A meeting last month of arts and sciences department chairs turned into a heated argument over the classroom icons; a handful of faculty have written to the administration to protest, and some unsuccessfully circulated a petition asking to have crucifixes removed.

“I believe that the display of religious signs and symbols, such as the crucifix, in the classroom is contrary to the letter and spirt of open intellectual discourse that makes education worthwhile and distinguishes first-rate universities from mediocre and provincial ones,” Maxim D. Shrayer, chairman of the department of Slavic and Eastern languages and literatures, said in an interview.

“Christian iconography and symbols permeate this place and always have,” said the Rev. John Paris, a Jesuit priest who teaches bioethics at BC. Paris said he finds “offensive” the notion that a crucifix impedes the ability of students or faculty to think critically in a classroom and called the criticism “the narrow and bizarre musings of a few disgruntled folks.”

“This is a small problem for those with small minds,” Paris added. “This is not a serious controversy.”

Paris is wrong. It’s not a small problem. Big minds can profitably think about the extent to which a religious university visually presents itself as such. Is there, for instance, a kind of tipping point, in which reasonable people, religious or not, might find too many icons on campus?

How many icons is too much? UD would suggest that you’re in an over-rich iconic environment when your mind is directed too insistently, too often, to a particular doctrine…. When, as you enter a particular university’s gates, and as you walk through its interior and exterior spaces, you feel a bit mentally constrained in terms of thought that has to do with something other than a particular religious tradition.

If it feels, that is, as though the campus is designed to enforce, rather than prompt, spiritual reflection, there’s a problem.

I’d also say there’s an aesthetic issue here. Jam-packing your setting with anything is simply ugly, and it probably has an effect quite different from the one you want: It turns people off because it makes them feel manipulated.

These are subtle matters – theologically, aesthetically, institutionally.

… comes the sort of information about politics and the university you should worry about (as opposed to what Stanley Fish thinks you should worry about).

Les Gara’s a New York Jew with a Harvard degree who somehow got dropped down into Alaska, where he’s a Democrat in the Alaska House. He reports on a recent hearing:

The University of Alaska is this state’s greatest potential economic engine in the short term – for producing research, jobs, workers and opportunity. Well, last Tuesday University President Mark Hamilton came to the House Finance Committee to present his case for legislative funds. For 15 minutes he took questions from three of my GOP colleagues about why the students at the University were so, uh, politically misguided…

Some of the discussion by legislators went as follows:

“If I ask university staff, the people who are educating our future leaders, if they support the Chukchi Sea development, the Red Dog Mine or the Pebble Mine or any type of industry along those lines, a stereotypical response is they are in opposition . . .”

And

“I found it amazing there was a large disconnect in where the dollars for the state of Alaska come from on a regular basis as far as production of oil on the North Slope goes, and how it is turned into revenue for the state of Alaska and in turn is invested in the university system,” she said.

And

“How should I advocate more funding for an entire group that doesn’t want to see development going forward.”

The tenor of this hearing was troubling for many reasons.

First, there is no “right” or “wrong” view on the Pebble Mine, or offshore development, and lumping students with divergent views in one camp is easier than it is accurate. I don’t find students to be of one mind on these issues, and I find them more than able to justify their divergent views.

Second, universities are for teaching students to learn and explore policy solutions. It isn’t my business whether a student agrees or disagrees with me on these points – I only care that they are interested enough to form their opinions and do some thinking about them. Thinking students can come to conclusions on these issues across the spectrum and I’m glad when they do.

And, finally, if the point is that students should stand up for policies that bring the state money, so we can fund the university – then maybe the students weren’t misguided at all. The “liberal” students stereotyped at the Finance Committee hearing would presumably have voted for the oil tax reform bill we passed last year – which will likely bring in over $30 billion in additional revenue while including oil production incentives to promote development. So, if we’re going to rate these students on how much money they’d bring into the state with their “views”, they, I believe, did a better job for the state than those who voted against the November, 2007 oil reform law we passed. And since offshore oil development on federal lands and mining bring in relatively little state money, it’s not clear how a student’s views on those projects has much bearing on bringing in state revenue to fund the University…

Yes, Gara needs to cool it on the quotation marks.

But he’s on to the real tenured radicals scandal: In states like Alaska, some legislators are politicizing the academy.

Alabama A & M has stopped functioning. Corrupt, inept, the school’s finished. It continues to operate as a set of buildings inside of which taxpayer money is wasted.

The situation fascinates UD, a veteran university-watcher. If a university falls in the forest, but no one gives a shit, does it make a difference? Does the university go on lying there, deadwood drawing state appropriations?

It’s a story worth following.

The University of New Mexico’s corrupt and greedy president, having been tossed out of two prior university president jobs, will soon, UD anticipates, be tossed out of this one.

Look at his Google News page! Nepotist, jocksniffer, anti-intellectual — David Schmidly’s the compleat anti-president.

And yet. After getting ejected from one institution after another, he always seems to dust himself off and find a new one.

From The Daily Texan:

A heated debate at the Senate Finance Committee meeting today led to the resignation of the chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company Board.

The senate committee grilled Chairman Robert Rowling and CEO of UTIMCO Bruce Zimmerman over the $3 million in bonuses paid to the staff, included a $ 1 million bonus for Zimmerman.

The comments and questions by the senators became so heated that Rowling declared his immediate resignation.

“I resign,” Rowling said heatedly, “You can have my job.”

UTIMCO is the first external investment corporation formed by a public university system and oversees investments for UT and Texas A&M Systems.

The controversy concerned a UTMICO CEO Zimmerman’s $1.05 million bonus on top of his $575,000 base salary.

The senators seemed confused by UTIMCO’s decision in the face of a recession and budget deficit…