Troyer Falls on her Sword

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I am fascinated by the ongoing story offering tantalizing hints that the University of Illinois President Michael Hogan’s chief of staff was operating as a kind of  stealthy hatchet woman for the administration (“U. of I. investigating whether president’s chief of staff was behind anonymous emails“). “I am concerned that this could bespeak a major problem in the ethical dimensions of the university,” the piece quotes Senates Conference Chair Donald Chambers, “and we find that very troubling…” No doubt.

The president is new to the job and he brought with him his Chief of Staff,  Lisa Troyer, who cost the taxpayers a little more than $200,000  a year. (The former president, apparently, had a budget entourage and no need of a chief of staff.)  Ironically, email sent from Ms. Troyer’s computer emphasized the importance of “”integrity and transparency” in disputes over university policy. I hope that the news media does its job; we need to know if this has been Hogan’s Modus Operandi in former positions.

Posted in: Professional

Pots and Kettles

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As someone who works in the for-profit higher education, I am often dismayed at what happens in my little corner of the economy. I think our industry emerged in an economic culture that was far too unregulated and far too greedy. I think we need more regulation and I think that our industry doesn’t need to be so narrowly focused on short-term profits. We share all the problems of modern U.S. capitalism, in other words.

I am also often dismayed at the way problems in the for-profit sector seem to be used as cover for the more profound problems in the public sector.  These problems are dwarfed by the exploitation of adjunct labor, bloated  administrative salaries, the weakening of tenure, the corruptions of big college sports, and the rise of student debt, to name only a few, that have characterized the public sector for the last three or four decades.

These problems in the public sector are more profound because they set the standard for the culture at large.  For-profit schools will come and go– that’s the nature of a market– but without a democratic, service oriented public university system we might not have a democracy or a functioning economy at all. I think, too,  that the for-profit sector will not flourish without profound reform in the public sector.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing

Corruption Studies, University Sports Division

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I can’t decide if the ongoing stories about coaches and administrative salaries (“From the Sideline to the Bottom Line“) are going to have a Lenny Bruce effect– if you repeat something often enough it looses all power to shock– or an “occupy” effect of  driving protest by emphasizing just how profoundly greed shapes what are supposed to be institutions devoted to public service.

It makes me wonder if we ought to be advocating for Corruption Studies as a new form of cultural studies;  here, we would be studying one of its main branches, the University Sports Division. I think that Corruption Studies would begin with a discussion of the history of the ongoing rise of tuition and fees on the one hand, and student debt on the other, over the course of the last three or four decades.

This history would then be contrasted or juxtaposed with the rise of big time university sports programs and, more specifically, the fantastically inflated salaries of coaches.  As the sports programs grow larger– supposedly, at least nominally and at first, as a way to support the universities academic missions– and generate more money, tuition, fees, and debts rise. That’s corruption in a nutshell.

Posted in: Economics, Professional