It's Good To Be The Boss

Especially if you're a university president:

In the 1990s, the president of Adelphi University was accused of receiving excessive compensation and forced from office. Since then, the leaders of American, Towson, Texas Southern and other endowment-poor universities have also crashed to earth after plunging their institutions into turmoil for similar excesses.

Now, charges are swirling over Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. The state attorney general has sued the institute and its president, Harold J. Raveché, accusing him of plundering the endowment and receiving $1.8 million in illegal low-interest loans for vacation homes, with half of them later forgiven.

The institute’s trustees tripled Dr. Raveché’s salary over a decade, to $1.1 million last year, higher than presidential salaries at Harvard, M.I.T. and Princeton, and, the lawsuit says, Stevens used multiple sets of books to hide its deteriorating financial condition.

I guess it's not just "Wall Street fat cats" and "evil corporations" who do this sort of thing.

Update: The theme of the above post hits a little close to home:

Attorney General Jerry Brown is auditing University Enterprises Inc., a nonprofit organization that is closely affiliated with Sacramento State.

In a letter dated Nov. 5, the attorney general's office asked University Enterprises for seven years of financial information as well as information about loans made to Alexander Gonzalez, president of California State University, Sacramento. Gonzalez also serves as the president of University Enterprise's board of directors...

But the audit of University Enterprises appears to come in response to a request from the California Faculty Association, the union that represents CSU professors, which sent a letter to the attorney general in July. The letter alleges that University Enterprises and other foundations affiliated with Cal State campuses have mismanaged millions of dollars. It cites these examples....

*sigh*