I wonder if Myles would be willing to come back to IU in 2008? Just kidding!
From everything I have read, President Herbert was doing a decent job of cleaning up the mess that Myles left. But you can't please everyone and the Faculty did a good job of running this President and his annual $335K salary off.
Yet IU gives Davis a 300K bonus, a $900K annual salary and will probably give him a contract extension this year.
What is wrong with this picture?
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3 comments:
Coming from Florida and Herbert's home town, I can't tell you how baffled I am about his departure, in light of all the other bull that has gone on at IU the past 5-10 years. Are we adrift? This guy had a stellar reputation in a state four times the size of Indiana, with a lot more complex issues and personalities (i.e. Jeb Bush). And how we've effectively run him off. Given the Mallory/Cameron/Dinardo departures, the Knight fiasco, the McNeely farce, and now this, I'm really having second thoughts about that lifetime membership in IUAA. This is a joke -- and it's not even funny anymore.
This has been stored up for a long time, so bear with me...
Part of the rumor at IU is that we didn't run Herbert off; he just never showed up in the first place to fix things. I don't know if all the rumors of his long absences back to Florida are true, but it seems to me that he's been pretty silent, as presidents go - especially given the state in which IU was left by Brand.
I realize that as a university president, it isn't his job to be here all the time, and he's not a miracle worker. But it's been three years, and Herbert has had basically no effect on IU culture whatsoever. Worse yet, those who have been doing some positive things for IU have been actively discouraged or rejected by Herbert (see the Dean Swamy recent move to UK, as well as several other top administrators). For instance, there's no excuse for a 2.5 year "interim" chancellor to still be here. Either give Ken Gros Louis the job that he's infintely qualified for, or get on with finding somebody else.
To answer your question from a first-hand perspective - yes, IU is adrift. The university hasn't fallen apart from the major damage that Brand inflicted, but it is definitely badly hurt. Our legislature's lack of support is pricing state colleges out of reach for most students, and the president hasn't had much effect in stopping it. To be fair, that may not be his fault - our statehouse is full of nutcases. (I'd pit Mitch Daniels against Jeb Bush in a celebrity grudge match anyday. Man, would that sell tickets!) But to make up for our lack of funds, until recently IU has relaxed standards and crammed our classes to the rafters. The results have been awful on the undergraduate side. Graduate schools like Business, Medicine, and Law will always do OK. but that's only because they have smart administrators and other sources of funding.
Our technological and physical infrastructure is rapidly declining. Students have trouble signing up for classes, and classrooms go unassigned a week into the semester (resulting in - no joke - faculty fights in front of the students over classroom space). Staff & faculty have trouble giving grades and maintaining student records, which has resulted in dozens of students not graduating on time. Some of our buildings have been found to be filled with mercury and asbestos, but IU's response is that it's "too expensive" to clean up. School spirit is auctioned up to the highest corporate bidder and sanitized for ESPN. Talented staff and faculty are leaving due to low pay and no respect, but we're paying "short-term" long-contract consultants big bucks to figure out why.
I love IU - I love it as my alma mater, my workplace, and a bright spot in this state that prides itself on first-class dumbassery. I care about what happens to it. When I'm old, I want to visit in the fall for a packed football game when I'm too fat to fit into an old-lady IU velour track suit - then later in the spring, I want to complain about the idiot drunken whippersnappers who wander out to Little 5 in the spring. I want every student to know who Kinsey is, and which dorm Jim Jones and Jane Pauley slept in. In short, I'd like to see us become a college again, and not just a short-term bar before daddy gets us into MBA school.
It's not like I expect another Wells to come out of the woodwork to fix things. But it would be nice to have a president with a little character, a lot of heart, and at least a modicum of IU expertise. Is that asking too much?
Anna, THANK YOU!
I appreciate your first hand account... as sad as it may be.
Steve
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