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Fired College Pres. Earned Highest Salary Among Peers Nationwide in 2012

by College Fix Staff on May 13, 2013

As student debt and tuition costs soar, so do public college presidents’ salaries – by the millions.

That’s the long and short of a series of articles published Sunday that highlighted The Chronicle of Higher Education’s survey of public college presidents’ salaries in 2012.

“Public U. Presidents Make Bank,” screamed the Daily Beast.

The Baltimore Sun did a little math on the list, noting “four presidents at public research universities made a collective $9.2 million in fiscal year 2012.”

What’s worse – the college president who earned the most last year got his loot – because he was fired.

“While former president of Penn State University, Graham Spanier, left the university during the worst scandal it has seen during his 16 year tenure, he was well compensated as the highest-paid public university president last year,” ABC News reported. “Spanier received total compensation of $2.9 million in the 2011-12 school year, including $1.2 million in severance pay and $1.2 million in deferred compensation paid during that year. Spanier was fired as president in November 2011 for his handling of the child sex-abuse scandal involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.”

In other reports, The Detroit News noted that “two public university presidents in Michigan rank among the highest-paid in the nation, with one in the top 10.” One earned $918,783. The other – $672,000.

The median total compensation for public college presidents, by the way, is $441,392 for 2012,  according to The Chronicle.

“Jay Gogue, Auburn University in Alabama, was the second-highest paid president in the nation, earning a $2.5 million package,” the Detroit News reported. “E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, earned a $1.89 million package.”

Many articles on the subject were quick to note that these salaries come as the so-called higher education bubble is bigger than ever, with tuition costs that continue to soar, ballooning student debt, and many recent college grads who remain unemployed or underemployed.

“Salaries of presidents of U.S. public universities rose almost 5 percent in the last fiscal year, even as tuition rose and student debt soared, with the median pay package topping $400,000, according to a report released on Sunday,” Reuters reported.

In comparison, Reuters noted, “The Chronicle surveyed compensation at private colleges in 2010, and found that 36 private college presidents earned more than $1 million. The median pay of the 494 presidents surveyed was $397,860.”

The Top Ten public college presidents’ salaries for 2012 is as follows, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Graham Spanier, Penn State University, $2,906,721.

Jay Gogue, Auburn University, $2,542,865

E. Gordon Gee, Ohio State University, $1,899,420

Alan Merten, George Mason University, $1,869,369

Jo Ann Gora, Ball State University, $984,647

Mary Sue Coleman, University of Michigan system, $918,783

Charles Steger, Virginia Tech, $857,749

Mark Yudof, University of California system, $847,149

Bernard Machen, University of Florida, $834,562

Francisco Cigarroa, University of Texas system, $815,833

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Prof: Bush’s Abstinence-Only Sex Ed Policies Prompted Need for Porn Class

by College Fix Staff on May 13, 2013

A city college professor whose class devoted entirely to pornography made national headlines recently defended his course as worthy and important, adding that President George W. Bush and his abstinence-only sex education policies are partly to blame for why there’s such a need for a pornography class.

“Most of my students were born in the early-to-mid-1990s; they hit puberty under the influence of two conflicting social realities: the widespread availability of broadband and the Bush-era abstinence-only sex education policies,” says Professor Hugo Schwyzer. “The latter deprived far too many of them of accurate, comprehensive, pleasure-based information about sex; increasing access to the former meant that Internet pornography became the primary and ubiquitous source of information about the birds and the bees.”

With that, argued Schwyzer in his May 9 The Atlantic piece, “what was designed to arouse and entertain now is expected to educate as well.”

Schwyzer, who teaches “Navigating Pornography” at Pasadena City College, also defended his class as commonplace.

“Today, dozens of courses on pornography are offered on college campuses across the country, taught by instructors from a wide variety of disciplines including film, women’s studies, art, sociology, psychology, English, and history,” he wrote.

In his piece, however, he names only one: “University of California, Santa Barbara Professor Constance Penley has taught “Topics in Film Genre: Pornographic Film’ since 1993.”

Although he does point out how professors often slip in pornography screenings into classes, and how academics undertake journals, books and studies about pornography, including a new peer-reviewed publication launching next year.

He also aimed to offer proof his course is quite an academic one – students study the origins of modern pornography, with special attention paid to the Marquis de Sade; its modern day business aspects; and the landmark 1973 obscenity case Miller v. California. Critics of porn’s misogynistic tendencies are also broached in the classroom, he argued.

He rounds out the piece by pointing out his personal reasons for offering the course.

“Even more than history lessons and an introduction to feminist debates, my students need and deserve the tools to combat sexual shame,” Schwyzer wrote. “Students need more than history and theory. They need safe spaces to think through—and in some instances, talk through—their fears, desires, and uncertainties. When it comes to a subject like porn, a safe space means a place where they won’t be judged, mocked, or sexualized regardless of what they reveal.”

And there it is. Porn continues to be justified as a viable part of mainstream higher education curriculums.

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Professor Links High Suicide Rates with Republicans, Gun Owners

by College Fix Staff on April 5, 2013

A new study published by a University of California sociology professor links the risk of suicide with gun ownership rates and people who voted for George W. Bush.

“States with the highest rates of gun ownership — for example, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama, and West Virginia — also tended to have the highest suicide rates. These states were also carried overwhelmingly by George Bush in the 2000 presidential election.”

That’s how campus officials summed up the recently published study by the professor, who teaches at UC Riverside in Southern California.

The professor also argued stricter gun control laws would reduce suicide rates, but that won’t happen because too many Americans believe they have the right to bear arms.

“Although policies aimed at seriously regulating firearm ownership would reduce individual suicides, such policies are likely to fail not because they do not work, but because many Americans remain opposed to meaningful gun control, arguing that they have a constitutional right to bear arms,” sociology professor Augustine Kposowa was paraphrased as saying by UCR Today, an official campus publication.

“Even modest efforts to reform gun laws are typically met with vehement opposition,” Kposowa said. “There are also millions of Americans who continue to believe that keeping a gun at home protects them against intruders, even though research shows that when a gun is used in the home, it is often against household members in the commission of homicides or suicides. … Adding to the widespread misinformation about guns is that powerful pro-gun lobby groups, especially the National Rifle Association, seem to have a stranglehold on legislators and U.S. policy, and a politician who calls for gun control may be targeted for removal from office in a future election by a gun lobby.”

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Homosexual Community Celebrates Inroads on California Campuses

by Jennifer Kabbany - Associate Editor on February 5, 2013

Mixed-gender student housing, the proliferation of homosexual student resources centers, queer cultural programming and health insurance that caters to the transgendered were just some of the milestones heralded recently to mark the rise of prominence of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Queer community at colleges across California over the last 20 years.

The “UQ Conference: 20 Years of LGBT Campus Progress,” was held Saturday at the University of California-Riverside. More than 300 people – many of whom are leaders of the LGBTQ movement on their respective California campuses – attended to celebrate the community’s “progress” and call for more action to that end.

Since 1993, the number of LGBTQ centers at colleges across California has gone from zero to 26, including centers at nearly every University of California campus, according to conference organizers.

They also noted gains such as the development of programs to offer students minors in LGBTQ studies, mixed-sex housing at some campuses, the UC system’s support of domestic partner health and retirement benefits, and “transgender-inclusive” health insurance.

“At one count, UCLA had 24 – yes, 24 – different LGBT organizations, mostly for students,” Charles Outcalt, founding director of UCLA LGBT Center, is quoted as saying by UCR Today. “In the end, all the struggles, all the protests, all the meetings, all the studies and hard work and tears and happiness are about who we are, and who we love. Whoever you are, and whomever you love, take a moment to be proud of yourself, and celebrate yourself and your communities.”

At the celebration, breakout sessions such as “Beyond Surviving: Students Moving From Religious Oppression to Queer Activism,” “Beyond Binaries: Supporting Bisexual, Pansexual, Fluid & Queer (BPFQ) Identified Students” and “Queer Youth Mentoring/Outreach” took place, among others.

UCR Today summarized the sessions by noting “panel moderator Shaun Travers, UC San Diego diversity officer and LGBT Resource Center director, asked (speakers) to share their ‘queer super power.’ Answers ranged from the ‘femme subversiveness’ of Debbie Bazarsky, UC Santa Barbara founding director and current LGBT resource director at Princeton University, to ‘Elastic Man’ Billy Curtis of UC Berkeley, proud of his ability to stretch resources.”

“Other panel topics included the skills needed to direct a campus LGBT center, the ‘lavender ceiling’ for those wanting to move up into administration, and the importance of student activism.”

But not all was peachy keen among attendees, as they bemoaned recent budget cuts to student LGBTQ centers and the streamlining of some campus diversity departments. For example, one breakout session was titled “Responding to the Downsizing of Campus Queer Resource Centers.”

“One critical challenge is to stave off budget driven reorganizations impacting some of our queer resource centers,” Deborah Abbott, founding director of the Cantú Queer Center at UC Santa Cruz, is quoted by UCR Today as saying. “The Cantú Queer Center at UC Santa Cruz is losing one of its two professional staff members–and our only staff person of color. On a campus where nearly one in five students identifies as queer, this downsizing will have a large negative impact on our capacity to provide safety net services and queer cultural programs to our students, staff, faculty, and alumni.”

Click here to read the full report on UCR Today.

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California Taxpayers Foot Bill for Illegal Immigrants’ Tuition

by Nicole Swinford - Chapman University on January 17, 2013

A new law that took effect Jan. 1 in California allows students who are not in the country legally access to a variety of state-funded college tuition financial aid.

Assistance such as community college fee waivers, Cal Grants and similar aid is now open to non-legal residents, with awards of up to $12,200 a year for low- and middle-income students.

To be eligible for the money, students must graduate from a California high school after attending for at least three years, and meet financial and academic standards.

Supporters of the law downplay its financial significance in this cash-strapped state, citing widely circulated statistics that less than 1 percent of students in the California State University, University of California and community college systems are undocumented. They also insist that the new law, part of the California Dream Act, won’t eat into the pool of college aid given annually to legal citizens.

However the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analysis Office reports that the law will likely cost Californians $65 million a year by 2016. Critics say the law rewards breaking the rules and is an insult to foreign students who enter the country legally.

“We should reward those who respect our process instead of creating new incentives for those who don’t,” Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly said in a statement to the Riverside-based Press-Enterprise, which reported that about 20,000 people – less than one percent of college students – are expected to apply for the state-funded Cal Grants.

But Donnelly told the newspaper the law will take away money from students who are U.S. citizens, and that it goes against the wishes of California voters, citing a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll which found 55 percent of voters opposed the law and 40 percent supported it.

The poll also showed a huge ethnic divide, with 79 percent of Latinos supporting the law, compared with 30 percent of white supporters, the Press-Enterprise notes.

The latest law granting undocumented students Cal Grants and similar aid joins a growing number of perks for illegal immigrants in California. They are already eligible for reduced in-state tuition at campuses statewide, as state law offers tuition breaks to any student who has attended a California high school for three years, regardless of their immigration status.

What’s more, as of Jan. 1, 2012, they were granted access to private college scholarships funneled through public universities.

State immigration advocates such as Luz Gallegos argue that children should not be punished for the sins of their parents.

“There’s so much potential for them,” she told the Press-Enterprise. “It’s not their fault their parents brought them here undocumented.”

Others see it differently.

Kristen Williamson, a spokeswoman for Federation for American Immigration Reform, told the Los Angeles Times the law is “a reckless use of taxpayer money.” And Republican Assemblyman Curt Hagman told the newspaper it “absolutely sends the wrong message. It says if you violate the law, it’s OK.”

Fix contributor Nicole Swinford is a student at Chapman University.

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UC Berkeley Libs Want to Ban The Salvation Army

by College Fix Staff on December 7, 2012

Via Campus Reform:

The student government at the University of California-Berkeley (CAL) passed a resolution last month that would ban Salvation Army bell ringers and their iconic red kettles from campus this Christmas because of the Christian organization’s alleged bias against homosexuality.

UC Berkeley is “reviewing” whether or not they will prohibit the Salvation Army from operating on campus this Christmas, after students passed a resolution condemning the charity.

The resolution, cleared on November 14, accuses the charity of openly discriminating against gay individuals.

“Salvation Army church services, including charity services, are available only to people ‘who accept and abide by the Salvation Army’s doctrine and discipline,’ which excludes homosexuality,” reads the bill, SB 176.

In the resolution, the student body also demands school administrators revoke the Salvation Army’s permit, which currently allows them to collect donations on the Berkeley campus.

“Allowing the Salvation Army to collect donations on campus is a form of financial assistance that empowers the organization to spend the money it raises here in order to discriminate and advocate discrimination against queer people,” it adds.

Read the full story here.

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