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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Strange doings…

…in Alaska, which scored a dismal last among states in effective use of public funds for state universities. Virtually no one at the university system has responded to the much-cited study.

What administrators have done instead is quickly announce the results of what sounds like a pretty dinky phone survey done last year that reveals profound contentment with the university system among Alaskans.

The State Senate has decided to look into things, as a retired professor notes:



Recently the Alaska State Senate announced that it would appoint a special panel to examine policies and directions of the University of Alaska. It apparently wants to know how the University spends its money and how this benefits the citizens of Alaska. I believe that such a committee has been needed for decades. Hopefully it will have enough clout to make recommendations independent of pressure and lobbying from University administrators and Board of Regents.

Perhaps some basic questions can be addressed and answered by this committee:

1. Could the committee provide a public listing and salaries for all University of Alaska administrators earning $100,000 or more per year? Students and citizens deserve easy access to this public information.

2. Why does the University need so many mid and high level administrators? What can be done to significantly reduce this number?

3. Who determines the salaries of these University managers? Should an outside panel set administrative salaries to reduce and contain these costs?


UD suspects that Alaska is too parochial and corrupt for anything to come of this oversight activity, however. She fears that the educational system is Alaska's real bridge to nowhere.
Posted at: 1/22/2006 07:04:00 AM