By Professor
I’ve mentioned
quite a few times the insanely high administrative pay of higher education.
Even the most irrelevant Dean can now command a salary well past $100,000 a
year, and this is all
quite public information.
It isn’t just the
salary that is ridiculous, it’s the sheer number of administrators on campus
now. If there’s a problem in one of my classes, I could potentially receive 8
different e-mails from various bosses letting me know about it (note: this is
direct experience. Much like in Office Space, I have received communications
from multiple bosses regarding the same trivial issue, on more than one
occasion).
The biggest
growth in administration is Diversity. Trust me, no administrator anywhere
wants to be viewed as not being for Diversity, for social justice, and everything associated with it. So, many
campuses open up Diversity fiefdoms, and pack them full of Vice Presidents of
Diversity.
The
qualifications for this subject are minimal. Just say you’re for social
justice, and you’re in. I’m not exaggerating. Heck, you can get accepted into a
top school like Stanford just by writing #BlackLivesMatter a hundred times on
your application. I can’t
make this stuff up.
To get my faculty
position at a good school, I need to have advanced degrees and a strong record
of scholarship. I’m not starving or even asking for higher pay, but if money
were what I wanted, I could throw away my nigh 30 years of experience and
flawless track record, retrain as a plumber, trade in my pencil for a shovel
and make more than what I do now.
On the other
hand, I could just shout “Black Lives Matter” and be qualified for a Vice
President of Diversity position. What kind of money would I make doing that? A
recent article looks at the plunder ripe for the taking:
Granted, “big
bucks” is in the eye of the beholder, so let’s put some numbers down:
Although the average salary for a diversity
officer was approximately $175,000, at 15 universities the position offers
remuneration in excess of $200,000, while in two cases the salary tops $300,000
per annum.
I’d be quadrupling my pay just by shouting “black lives matter” loudly.
Hey, no wonder we have so many people on campus shouting slogans instead of
studying…why isn’t there widespread outrage at pissing away such huge
quantities of money on pabulum like this? It took humanity thousands of years
to master the concepts of mathematics and science, but these concepts are
apparently nearly worthless next to being able to chant slogans and threaten
violence to people you disagree with.
I’ve targeted Poo Bahs for their insane
pay, but at least taxpayers are forced to only pay for one of those creatures
on each campus. The gentle reader should understand that you don’t get just one
“diversity officer,” you get a fiefdom of such creatures, and that could mean
dozens of Vice Presidents of Diversity, sucking down money at an average of
$175,000 per year, apiece….and all they’re doing is making our institutions
worse. It’s their job, you see.
Two academic institutions — the University of
Tennessee and the University of Maine — do not provide funding for a diversity
officer or task a senior administrator to provide the service.
Maine and Tennessee don’t have diversity officers. You know what else
they don’t have? Riots. I’ve made over 500 posts to my blog, detailing
atrocities and incidents. When I type in “Maine” in the search bar, there are
zero entries. Tennessee only gets one entry, and it’s incidental and certainly
not a riot.
When I walk into a McDonalds
(hypothetically), there’s a little set up where I can procure napkins or
utensils, for free! It’s not really free, I know when I pay for their
pseudofood the cost of the napkins is accounted for. You know what? Every
restaurant I go to provides that service…because they know it’s absolutely
necessary that their customers have access to such things. If a restaurant
tried not offering free napkins and such to customers (assuming such existed),
you can bet it would promote its lower prices as a feature.
How is it that Tennessee and Maine don’t provide the (insanely
expensive) Diversity service? Could it be because the service is completely
useless and the customers don’t even want it? Could the lack of riots and
similar insane behavior be taken as evidence that, yes, having Vice Presidents
of Diversity is bad for education?
Shouldn’t we as citizens get this kind
of information, and have some options about buying this Diversity service? You
want to bet that a school that said “we don’t have Vice Presidents of Diversity
here, but our tuition is $400 cheaper” would have an advantage? Well, it would
have an advantage, but seeing as the “free” Diversity service is paid for by
the student loan scam, there’s just no reason to keep costs under control.
It’s hysterical to hear the
justifications for the pay:
“…his counterpart at the University of Texas at
Austin…makes $331,000.
The media relations manager at the University of Texas at Austin
justified…income on the basis of the diversity officer’s coveted “portfolio”
that includes the ambiguous distinctions of “diversity, community engagement
and outreach.”
…“His salary reflects the competitive market for his leadership
skills, as seen in his recent hiring as the next president of Hobart and
William Smith Colleges.”
--we probably should ask about the Media Relations Manager’s
income too, considering the length of the title.
Ambiguous, indeed. I bet not a single student at U of Texas could
explain how this Diversity Officer impacted his education or research.
Education and research are the only things the university should care about,
and yet Diversity merits some $331,000 a year.
And then comes the crazy grunt about
“Leadership.” I’ve discussed before how much higher education has changed, but
it merits repetition. It’s not about leadership. Here’s an old mission
statement regarding the purpose of higher ed:
--I
really recommend the above post, it’s important we realize what’s going on now.
Today’s mission statements are more
about retention, but they also grunt about “leadership.” Again no: we don’t
need leaders running our schools, we need stewards who understand what
education is about.
We won’t get stewards, however. Instead
we’re going to get Diversity officers, people whose job it is to raise tensions
and cause riots on our campuses. Without the riots, without the tension…it’d be
even more obvious we don’t need these guys.
Knowing that they’re paid
salaries the average American could only fantasize about is merely insult to
the grievous injury they’re dealing to our universities.
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