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Saturday, May 1, 2010

Presidential Legacy

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's the sort of structure Vik Kapoor might have engineered.

Anonymous said...

More than a "legacy" this top-heavy and fragile house of cards represents the unsustainable outcome of Jacobs' reckless strategic planning after four years.

A stressed UT student body already overburdened with debt is represented by a single irreplaceable card at the bottom of the stack. Student-centeredness indeed! Meanwhile, a bloated administration at the very top exacerbates the inherent instability of this impossible architecture by suddenly shifting about in unexpected ways in search of self-advantage.

When that student body soon becomes faced with possible double-digit tuition and fee increases to cover the expenses of the revised Jacobs "Directions" strategic plan, what then?

Anonymous said...

A Haggettial Legacy:

http://www.ntdaily.com/?p=9031#more-9031

Walt Olson said...

This is sad.


Why are UT Faculty prejudicing the people at the new employment of Provost Haggett? It is true that she was not a strong provost on our campus and I as well as many others am not standing in her way to go. But all in all, she broke no law that we know of, she performed her duties in the manner that she thought best and she served the university.


I am a professor that has probably given her harsher criticism here than most other professors. I don’t think she did a good job here as Provost. I don’t know that she had to the opportunity to be a good Provost here. At the very first meeting of Main Campus Issues that she attended after she became Provost, I attempted to have the HSC representatives removed because I wanted her to be a strong Provost. When the letter regarding the College of Education came out, I was the one who publicly upbraided the President and Provost Haggett for its content and tone.


Yet I did not think that the President really gave her the respect and support to perform her job adequately. This was evident at BOT meetings where she was in a position where the Health Sciences Campus was always given front billing and her role was secondary. Often times, the President would turn to her and say, “Did you get that, Rosemary?” clearly establishing a secondary role. I don’t think I ever heard him say this to Provost Gold.


It seems to me to be dishonorable to be sending essentially anonymous and unsolicited comments to the people she is going to have to work with in the future. There is no need to hurt the lady. I think she has probably been hurt more than we will ever know. So give her a break. We should be wishing her success rather than trying to precipitate her failure.


Furthermore, these comments made to the North Texas community reflect poorly on this university… I can’t help but to wonder if the people of Denton aren’t asking, “What kind of people at the University of Toledo?”


If can not wish her luck and God speed in her new assignment, then just please let her go quietly. There is nothing to be gained and a lot to be lost by continuing this dialogue.

Anonymous said...

Can we move Walt's comment to be a post on the main page, please?

Gretchen Grunt said...

Hello Walt. I disagree. Your compassion seems misguided and undeserved. Dr. Haggett is an experienced professional. She was very highly paid for three years of loyalty to lunacy. She now proves herself decisive when it counts as this right-time departure entails a promotion in rank and moving on to subtropical climes where she will earn even HIGHER pay! If you ask me that's a lesson in administrator moxie you sadly fail to appreciate!

Walt Olson said...

Yes, Gretchen, I probably do not understand administrator moxie.
But allow me to ask these questions:

1) Is it wrong to seek a higher salary?
2) Is it wrong to seek advancement in position?
3) Is it wrong to seek a better climate?

Anonymous said...

I think it is important we attack these people no matter how bad it makes us look. If it makes us feel better it is worth it.

Anonymous said...

How does it make you feel good to see others wallow in misery?

The reason we argue and are at times critical is to improve our systems.

Somebody once said that the big difference between the Britsh and Americans is that Americans are happy to see whereas the British are unhappy. (This was said by Herbert Agar, an Englishman.)

Gretchen Grunt said...

Hello Walt. You ask:

1) Is it wrong to seek a higher salary?
2) Is it wrong to seek advancement in position?
3) Is it wrong to seek a better climate?

These are questions that our MBA and Law Schools should have been asking their students over the past few decades, but did not. Everyone in the professional schools (and I will throw in medical, pharmacy, education and library schools) agreed to assume "Greed is good!" and all seemed copasetic with this shared self-deception until the housing bubble burst. Now we all know, or should have learned, that greed does NOT "improve the human condition."

The irony at UT is that the Jacobs Administration with the encouraging of its Board of Trustees are so far behind the "new-ethics wave" in the marketplace of goods and services that they persist to fine-tune and push an obsolete "Directions" strategic plan that valorizes greed and ignores ethical and moral behavior. That is mismanagement of public higher education pure and simple.

Don't UT administrators and the members of the BOT read the Wall Street Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education?

(See here: "Harvard Business School Names Nohria New Dean" WSJ May 5, 2010:B9 e.g.: "Mr. Nohria says his focus going forward will be on business ethics, a cause he has long championed, particularly during the financial crisis. He has also been a vocal critic of management education and the leaders it produces")

President Jacobs and his hand-picked coterie embody the worst aspects of the threat to public higher education by persisting to impose a nefarious business model and its 80's "managerialism" ideology.

We have witnessed these corrupting influences of late trickle down from the Jacobs kleptocracy to infect some of our weakest-willed tenured professors and student-body officers, as well as others clueless to the threat. Thank God for this blog and the new Independent Collegian staff for reporting mismanagement and unethical behavior at UT.

Jacobs Administration response thus far to all this honest reporting about its ineptness has been an orchestrated chorus of crocodile tears painfully out of tune with reality and the times.

Greed is not good.

sir lawrence said...

hey ms grunt-
perhaps walt's third item is important- have you noticed how long capable women administrators last here at UT? just asking...

Anonymous said...

I agree with Gretchen. Jacobs' insistence that we must pay "market value" for the senior leaders and that we must pay "longevity bonuses" doesn't seem to have paid off. The upper-level administrators still leave (thank goodness!). Let's try a different approach: what if we paid upper-level administrators a fair wage rather than an exorbitant salary and see who is dedicated enough to step up? Let's see if we can attract candidates who care about higher education more than they care about collecting the highest gross income? If you want the big salary, go to work for the private sector. If you care about the greater good, then salary shouldn't be the most important factor. The governor of Ohio earns 142k per year. Does the governor work less than President Jacobs or a university Provost?

Anonymous said...

Just like the stock market, and the pay for Wall St. brokers, it is a bubble of their own making.

The people running around swapping this jobs are the ones telling each other how much they are worth. And just like when the stockmarket busts, it is the average joe, the ones who really do all the work, who takes all the hits, while those on top, the cause of these bubbles, the ones who tell themselves and everyone else they are worth it, continue to rake in the cash.

Walt Olson said...

First, I agree with most of the comments made. People are greedy. One can ask for anything but it certainly does not need to be granted…


When mediocre talent are being paid these exorbitant salaries and bonuses, it is a self feeding, positive feedback loop that is irrational and will cripple institutions such as ours.


Our problem is that our BOT and our administrative executives are paying the salaries under the assumption that we are getting high quality talent.


But evidence is showing that we are not. What accomplishments have these individuals shown to warrant the employment benefits that they are receiving? It seems that our BOT and executive administrators are not doing their due diligence.


But I do not agree that we should be trying to prejudice others against a person when that person has not been convicted of a crime in a court of law. People have the right to be greedy and to improve their lot in life. While I might not have much respect for a greedy person, the fault here lies with the people hiring and paying the salaries, not the people asking.


And with respect to bonuses: I do believe that it is not consistent with public government and public institutions to be offering bonuses. It is one thing to offer bonuses from the money that you earn as a private company and a totally different thing to be paying bonuses from tax monies and other publically controlled funds when the electorate has not specifically voted to authorize these disbursements. While the former is in the form of a gift, the latter is in the form of theft.

Anonymous said...

Several of you bring up important points about what is paid to whom--not that administrators at whatever level aren't important, they are, no matter their degree of competence. And I wouldn't want to have their jobs. But what about the people who are doing the real work of a university--the teachers, and the staff who help support them? You're so right that we don't go into this to get rich--but would it be so wrong to pay us more in line with what our work is worth? I don't know of any full-time instructor who works a 40-hour week Monday through Friday--and many part-timers work well over what their hour count is. Most of us hit 40 hours sometime midweek, and our weekends (and summers) are often used for job-related activities that there just isn't time for on the days we spend teaching.