The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved a proposal for a new football stadium at the University of North Texas that is expected to be completed for the 2011 season…

“If you look at America’s great universities, you’ll see that they all have the three A’s in common: great academics, great arts and great athletics,” said UNT president Gretchen M. Bataille in a release.

… what with that Knight Commission report and all… But UD thinks it’s time to ground the discussion in actual ongoing cases. The case method, if you will.

Let’s begin with this question: Does Mike Locksley, University of New Mexico football coach, make too much?

Well, before we reveal his salary, let’s consider what he’s contributed to UNM so far this year.

1.) The team’s record: 0 – 6. He’s in his first year, and has lost every game he has coached.

2.) He has an EEOC complaint against him for firing an administrative assistant because, he told her, he wanted a younger woman to “entice recruits.”

3.) He has a history of violent behavior, and has most recently beaten up one of his assistant coaches.

So… what seems a reasonable salary for this man?

Did you say $750,000 a year?

Bingo.

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

It’s impossible to put a price tag on the pride students and faculty must feel to be part of the UNM community.

… Austrian university students are striking to make sure that their higher education system remains lurid and open to all.

There’s not much coverage of events in the English-language press yet, but here’s a blog post with a video and some background.

And it ain’t bad at all.

You might recall that a few weeks ago University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau co-authored a Washington Post op-ed calling on the federal government to provide direct support — meaning taxpayer dollars — to select public universities. Birgeneau decried decades of “material and progressive disinvestment by states in higher education,” despite, as I pointed out, no such disinvestment actually occurring.

Well now we know where much of the precious investment in Cal was going — to subsidize sports. According to Inside Higher Ed, over just the past few years Berkeley has provided tens-of-millions of dollars in subsidies and loan forgiveness to its sports programs, which are supposed to be self-supporting.

Now, the whole college athletics undertaking is one that deserves lots of scrutiny for its subsidies and excesses. Cal is certainly not alone in this. But for Birgeneau to take to the pages of the Washington Post, cry poverty, and call for the nation’s taxpayers to foot his school’s bills while he quietly pushes millions of dollars to water polo, rugby, golf, and sundry other sports? That takes a lot of gall. Of course, rent-seeking gall is not in short supply when it comes to higher education.

Thankfully, at least this time it looks like the arrogant aggressiveness is going to backfire. Birgeneau is scrambling, and seems doomed to be thrown for a loss.

Neal McCluskey

The State University of New York system, as we know, is dealing at the same time with a big sports scandal and a big money scandal. Details here.

There’s a similar sort of two-front war raging at the University of Florida, where they’ve got both a big sex scandal and a big money scandal.

Money scandal first. UD covered the story back in May when accusations that the Director of the university’s Propulsion Institute created a fake research unit to steal from the government first arose. She was shocked back then to discover that Samim Anghaie’s university website still functioned; imagine her amazement to discover, post-indictment, that he’s still up there, representing the University of Florida.

As to the sex scandal: The only thing UD finds scandalous in this story is the sort of course the professor teaches. Scathing Online Schoolmarm thought she’d seen it all.

… this event.

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

OTOH…
He has been known
to dress up.

This photo (which you’ve
already seen if you’ve been
reading University Diaries
for years) shows him in his
peshmerga outfit — a present
from the peshmerga fighters
he hung out with a few
years ago in Kurdistan.

UD leaves tomorrow for Rehoboth
Beach, where she’ll be for a few days.

(She took the photo up there
a few Octobers ago.)

Blogging continues like crazy.

Excluding one flight to Naples with several other trustees and administrators, [Purdue University trustee JoAnn] Brouillette’s [twelve private, university-paid] flights [since the beginning of 2008] were to and from Fort Wayne, Ind., only spending 30 minutes in the air. Out of these flights, five of them carried no other passengers.

Me go UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN!

… UD thought she’d pay a visit to the Godzillatron, the immense screen many university football stadiums have recently had installed. These things — more commonly called Adzillatrons, because the main thing they do is show advertisements — cost millions. But a peek at this University of Texas opinion piece tells you that this outlay is only the beginning:

… Part of the excitement that allows fans to interact more with the team and the game is the animations and videos that are played on the jumbotron. [Oh right. Lots of people call it a jumbotron.] In this department, we are way past due for a major facelift.

To start, the video that is played directly before the team enters the field is nothing more than juvenile…

Fans pay a lot of money, travel long distances and sometimes sit through unbearable heat to watch their Longhorns play football. The least the athletic department could do is make the entertainment aside from the game as excellent as the team…

While I still go absolutely nuts when the video is played, it could be more professionally done….

More professional Adzillatron animations — your university athletics fee, and your parents’ taxes, at work.

… debate the merits of big time university football.

Problem: Finding someone to take the pro position.

[Professor Thomas] Palaima first wanted to argue against athletics, but he agreed to argue for it, said Madison Searle, a coordinator for the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan, which hosted the event. “It’s very hard to find a full-time professor who’s behind athletics,” he said.

Here’s a faculty resolution on athletics. Read the whole thing.

Highlights:

Only one-third of Cal’s men’s basketball players and one-half of the football players graduate, and Cal’s football graduation rate is near the bottom of the Pac-10 Conference.

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

Although it is widely believed that the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA) earns a profit for the Berkeley campus, its financial statements reveal that
it significantly outspends its revenues every year, depleting precious campus resources.

For the most recent 5-year period for which the DIA has released detailed data (2003-08) its cost to campus has been at least $10 million every year except for 2007-08 for which the cost was $7.4 million.

Current estimates for the most recent fiscal year (2008-09) indicate that the cost to the campus is expected to be a record high of approximately $13.5 million and is expected to be even higher for the current fiscal year (2009-10).

The DIA has cost the campus approximately $160 million since 1991.

The DIA is authorized to operate as an Auxiliary Enterprise on a financially self-supporting basis.

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

The faculty recommend that

All funding of Intercollegiate Athletics from campus subsidies and the use of student registration fees cease immediately (or as soon as possible to the extent permitted by existing contract constraints).

The DIA cease annual deficit spending and the Berkeley campus not permit Intercollegiate Athletics to spend beyond its actual annual direct revenues.

Charleston County Sheriff’s deputies arrest[ed] 3 women and [a Medical University of South Carolina] psychiatrist during an undercover prostitution sting at a strip club.

[Alberto] Santos, 50, was charged with theft and unlawful possession of a controlled substance and unlawful possession of and intent to distribute prescription medication. Deputies say he was using his patients’ pills as payment for sexual favors at the Silk Stockings by Amber gentlemen’s club.

Just getting started.
Looks promising.
Here’s the website.

Click on the picture
for a full view.

I’ve updated the column on the right of this page which lists reactions from the blogosphere to University Diaries. Out with the old praise, in with the new.

UD’s grateful for all of these generous words.

She’s also grateful, as ever, to this blog’s webmistress, UD‘s niece, Carolyn. Carolyn did the technical work.

[The commissioner of the Big Ten conference] warned of the risks involved in reducing [athletics] spending. Doing so is likely to raise the ire of donors, university trustees and members of the public. “It is a contact sport,” Delany said. “I’ve found it much easier to generate revenue than to cut costs. I’m being honest with you.”

And that’s how you make the world safe for Bobby Lowder.