Saturday, July 29, 2017

Screw Up, Move Up

When I was in the army--more than half my life ago--we used to have a saying:  "f*** up, move up."  When someone screwed up they were moved up to a staff position in higher headquarters.  True, they were out of a "line" unit, but they also had more decent working hours and much less field time.

As it was in the army, so it is in higher education:
Linda P.B. Katehi, who resigned last year as UC Davis chancellor after months of controversy, will return as a distinguished professor in September at the same pay rate she received as campus leader, university officials said Friday.

Katehi will be paid $318,000 on a nine-month contract – when annualized, equivalent to the $424,000 salary she received as chancellor. She will teach electrical and computer engineering, as well as women and gender studies, according to a UC Davis bio.

Her salary appears to make her the highest paid faculty member in either department, based on the most recent UC salary data available to the public.
Let's recall why she's no longer in charge at UC Davis:
Katehi, 63, resigned last August as an embattled chancellor who faced questions about her actions and leadership. She initially drew criticism for accepting a board seat from for-profit DeVry Education Group while it was under federal investigation for allegedly misleading students. She later came under fire when The Sacramento Bee reported she spent heavily on image-enhancing firms to boost her reputation after the 2011 pepper-spraying of student protesters by campus police.
Doesn't sound good, right?  Well, check out the wrist-slap she got:
University of California President Janet Napolitano launched a $1 million, four-month investigation that ended with an agreement allowing Katehi to return in 2017 as a member of the faculty. But first, as is the tradition, she was allowed to take a year off at her chancellor’s pay, plus retirement and health benefits.
Does that sound reasonable?
“This is exactly why so many people are so cynical about government,” said Ed Howard, senior counsel for the Center for Public Interest Law.
No feces, detective.

2 comments:

BB-Idaho said...

Former Dean of Engineering at Purdue, she cannot be the dimmest bulb
on the faculty. I agree that nepotism (hiring and promoting a daughter in law) is unacceptable. Except of course, for the President of the United States hiring his entire family.

Ellen K said...

It's just the Academia model of "passing the trash"-a system where principals non-renew problem employees to avoid lawsuits and then refuse to let subsequent districts know the nature of the problem. Case in point: At one school in my district we had this strange man who gave all the girls with big boobs A's in his class no matter how untalented or how little work they did. The high school took the unprecedented step of removing him WITH FULL PAY before the second semester. Imagine my surprise when attending an AP Summer Institute to see that same creepy guy who had evidently been hired by another district in the area. I'm sure having often come from the education hierarchy those same bad habits exist in universities as well.