How Much is Your College President Costing You?

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With the export-every-job-to-China mentality found in corporate America nowadays, you can leave school with a 4-year degree and not find a job. Even with a degree in engineering from a good school with good grades, people are finding the best they can do is a sales job ... selling stuff from China. I never thought I would see the day when engineering degrees became worthless, but that's fast becoming the status quo.

Mary of NC 10:03PM February 22, 2011

Take a look at community colleges, where we educate our students through an open-access mission at the lowest cost in American higher education. My salary "costs" each student $30 per year. My schedule and engagement with the community we serve equals and surpasses that of many of my colleagues in higher education. We're far from a corporate operation, although we are in the business of education in the broadest sense of that definition. Our focus is on helping students to be successful, to achieve their goals, no matter how well defined or not they may be.

Daniel Larson of NY 10:21AM February 17, 2011

I agree with you Sherry. My husband is an Adjunct for a private university and it is everything that you describe. Here in Texas, the President of UT-Austin, pulls down $750k per year. It is a racket and the young college youth of today will be slated the first 20 years after they graduate to be the Serfs who serve the Corporatists. Our Government structures, schools, churches, every social institution that makes up our society, our country, have been corrupted by power, money and greed. It is a sad statement of who we are. I went back to school in the late 1970s and my educational costs through 2000 when I retired, for a BA/MA/Certifications were collectively never more than $20K out of my pocket. What has happened is destroying opportunity and dumbing down our society even more....but then stupid masses are always easier to control than the educated in many cases.

Cigi of TX 7:56PM February 16, 2011

And, while College Presidents are pulling down six-figures, their institutional budgets are being balanced on the backs of doctoral level part-time faculty (adjuncts), many of which average between $2,200-2,800./course/semester. Colleges are increasingly becoming a micro-reflection of the corporate culture that has hijacked America. Their profit motive is apparent. Presidents are CEO's. Faculty are part of the vanishing middle class. Students are consumers. As long as the elite at the top get paid--and big!--the status quo is maintained.
The quality of education in America is declining, but the guys at the top get paid big bucks to spin language that makes the whole machine appear to be working. Like every other sector in US employment, the disparity in income between administrators and faculty is shocking.
I used to think that Colleges were in the business of education, but, in reality, they have become profit machines with well paid CEOs.

Sherry Ackerman, Ph.D. of CA 10:12PM February 15, 2011