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6/9/2008 The UW Board of Regents has persuaded me to run for state superintendent By Van Mobley The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com. Everyone agrees that for Wisconsin to flourish in the 21st century the UW System must at minimum remain one of the world’s foremost educational and research institutions. Unfortunately, the Board of Regents’ decision last week to provide exorbitant pay increases to top administrators, drastically increase tuition rates for students, and provide minuscule raises to UW System faculty and staff, demonstrates that they misunderstand the economic realities distressing Wisconsin’s residents and the political and organizational imperatives facing the UW System. The resulting lack of vision has prompted the Regents to adopt a strategy similar to the one utilized by America’s most poorly managed and least successful business corporations. Like many foolish corporate boards the Regents have lavished resources on salaries for administrators at the top of the organization and impoverished other stakeholders, lower level workers, and consumers. This short-sighted strategy fails in business (just ask the shareholders, customers, and employees of Enron or Bear Stearns) and it will fail in academia. The Regents must adopt another strategy quickly. If we continue on the path they have chosen, our university system, and along with it our state, will be irreparably damaged. Economic Realities Last year Wisconsin’s economy grew at a paltry 1 percent and this year it might shrink. This poor economic performance is due to many factors, some of which -- like our relatively high taxes and oft inadequate services -- can be addressed in-state, whereas others, such as the accelerating impact of high energy prices and the destabilizing impact of globalization, are difficult to address directly by in-state leaders. Still, the rising price of food and energy, stagnant wages and home values, plus the plummeting value of education savings accounts, make it clear to all but the most uninformed that the working people of Wisconsin can’t pay more to send their children or themselves to their own university system. It is irresponsible, and bordering upon morally repugnant, for the regents to select this particular juncture as the moment at which to heap another economic burden on Wisconsinites’ over-strained backs. If the regents can’t admit a mistake and roll back these tuition hikes the people of Wisconsin might crumple under the strain. UW Organizational Imperatives To lead the state into the future the university must have the best faculty and researchers in the country. But the administrators who flitter around in administrative halls don’t teach, and they don’t research. Ask a real live teacher or researcher and they will confirm that a large percentage of their valuable time and energy is consumed wrestling with layers and layers of overpaid, meddlesome, and unproductive administrators. If the regents had more insight into the university system they oversee they would be slashing the university’s bloated administrative sector and redirecting valuable resources thus liberated into more critical areas – such as teaching and research. Instead, they have chosen to exacerbate the administrative bloat by giving top administrators a massive pay raise, while at the same time neglecting the people who teach the classes and do the research. As justification for this indefensible choice the best they could do was say “we can’t compete and win as a university, we can’t do for Wisconsin what needs to be done, if we’re not attracting and keeping the best talent we can find. And that includes our academic leaders.” Hello, Regents. You just gave the UW-Madison chancellor a 33 percent raise and the faculty and staff a 1 percent raise. Do you think the faculty and staff won’t notice that disparity? Is that slap in the face designed to attract and keep “the best talent we can find” in the ranks that really matter – i.e. the faculty and staff researchers and teachers? Or has this ridiculously high pay raise for administrators been combined with an insult to teachers and researchers with the specific intent of demoralizing the “best talent we can find” among their ranks and thereby encouraging them to start shopping their CVs? The compensation committee for Bear Stearns said they were paying for the “best talent we can find” when they overpaid Jimmy Cayne (ex-CEO) to lead that formerly respectable but now defunct organization. But the compensation committee at Bear Stearns was wrong. If quality Bear Sterns employees had it to do over again they would have jumped ship when it became apparent that the board and senior administrators of Bear Stearns were compensating themselves with all the company resources which they did not squander, and thereby destroying what was previously a fine institution. The faculty and staff of the UW System are not fools. Far from “attracting and keeping the best talent we can find,” the regents’ unnecessary overpayment of the new chancellor, as well as the system president, is a horrible mistake that will drive talent away. Roll back this error or spark a mass exodus of the really important talent. Conclusion As a citizen of the state of Wisconsin and a proud graduate of UW-Madison I have faith my fellow citizens will continue to support our magnificent university. But i have lost faith in the current university regents and administrators. They are taking our university, and with it the entire state, down the wrong track. Their errors have persuaded me to run for superintendent of public instruction in April of 2009. If elected to that office I will use the position on the Board of Regents that it provides to ensure that the voice of the people is heard. When the people’s voice is heard everybody but the university’s overpaid and self-indulgent administrators, and perhaps the current crop of naive and mistake prone Regents, will be immeasurably better off. -- Mobley is a trustee in the Village of Thiensville, one of the few municipalities in Wisconsin that is completely debt free. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and remains a committed donor to the university, despite the regents’ and administrators’ folly. Contact him at vmobley@vzw.blackberry.net. |
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