Edit – please view this post at its new location
The vast majority of members of the UW Board of Regents are appointed. However, there is one position that is an elected office. The state superintendent of public instruction is an elected office, whose office holder is an automatic member of the Board of Regents. One UW-Madison alum was so disgusted with the actions of the Board of Regents at the end of last week that he has decided to run for said position in an attempt to bring sweeping change to the Board. Van Mobley has announced his candidacy for the April 2009 election of the next state superintendent. In the letter describing his motivations for running, he discusses the economic context of the recent Board of Regent’s decisions and makes an interesting comparison between the UW System and Bear Stearns, but the following passage is the crux of his criticism of the Board of Regents.
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?
3 responses so far ↓
Suchita // June 11, 2008 at 10:42 am |
Maybe Van Mobley is forgetting that the SSPI has another role beyond being a UW Regent? Oh, like, I don’t know… being the State Superintendent of Public Instruction?
Fearless Sifting // June 11, 2008 at 7:26 pm |
To be fair, just because that inspired his decision to run doesn’t mean he doesn’t know the job has other duties. He is in a career in education, as a prof at Concordia University.
Suchita // June 11, 2008 at 10:53 pm |
Right, but what has been his experience in administering public school education? Look at the current and prior SSPI’s –
Libby Burmaster: 25 years as a public school teacher and principal of Madison West High School.
John Benson: serving on a school board for over 20 years and was the district administrator for Marshall public schools.
Herbert Grover: superintendent of Monona Grove schools.
And those are just the most recent 3. Now, I’m not saying that an entire career in K-12 is requisite or even desirable. But I think if he gave a little more reasoning than wanting to be on the Board of Regents, his candidacy would seem less like it were out of left field.