If you want to be among the top twenty most highly compensated public university presidents in the United States, it helps to preside over spectacular crimes. Penn State’s Graham Spanier, “awaiting trial on criminal charges of perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected child abuse and conspiracy,” took the number one spot for 2011-2012; coming in at #11 was Florida A&M’s James Ammons, who had the beating to death of one of his marching band members at the hands of other members of the band on his watch. Even if your sports factory doesn’t manage to produce child rape or manslaughter, the simple expedience of being an eager slave of your coaches may do the trick: Auburn’s president made the list, as did Gordon Gee of Ohio State.
May 13th, 2013 at 1:12PM
I know UD can defend herself. Let me just note that newcomers to UD may be a little startled by the, ah, energetic language. A non-prof but fairly close observer of higher ed in my area, I wrestled with myself for years before finally admitting there’s a tiny percentage of profs, administrators, sports people, and so on, who’re “working” our universities for sex, money, unwarranted egoism, etc. I’m big-time okay with plain vanilla human error; I’m less okay with someone who knowingly manipulates the deeply asymmetric professor-pupil/master-student relationship to bootstrap his power trip.
Thanks, UD, for allowing me a vent.