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Hi Chris,<br><br>
If you had read the entire column, we did address (and have addressed
over the years) bloated administration and since 1995 we have shown how
much higher administrative pay has outstripped full professor pay--260
percent to 187 percent since 1982 with CPI at 210. <br><br>
As a result of our efforts, we have kept administrative pay under
control, rarely exceeding the average for faculty raises. Even with
a bargaining contract, however, we could not stop them from hiring new
middle managers.<br><br>
I agree with the post that argued that we can better use the scholarship
money, half of which comes from general education funds, to attract
minority students to campus. <br><br>
The enrollment of young women has increased regardless of scholarships
all over the nation, and what is imperative now is to somehow save a
generation of young men who are losing out academically.<br><br>
Thanks for the dialogue,<br><br>
Nick Gier<br><br>
At 03:11 PM 12/31/2008, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Nick,<br>
You are again attacking the wrong problem; the real problem is a bloated
administration that sucks the life out of the various colleges and
departments within the UI. Since you have a long history at the UI,
why don't you propose that the administration take a cleaver to itself
and cut itself back to the size it had in the early 1980's?
Remember back then that the University had roughly 8000 or so students,
overhead on research grants was 23%, and colleges and departments did not
pay any "fees" to the central administration? That should
be the goal of your arguement, not attacking the athletic
department. After all, without athletics, racial diversity would be
non-existent at the UI; and attempts to maintain gender equality would
probably slip away. <br>
<br>
I know that the move to the WAC has been a huge throne in your side;
however, there are far more females attending the UI with athletic
scholarships than in the Big Sky days. Why do you and the
leadership of the union so despise athletic scholarships? Why
do you fight so hard to destroy the one department at the UI that is
largely responsible for racial diversity? So what if the football
team has had a poor record in the last few years; the upside is that the
UI has these athletes as students. The NCAA stats clearly show that
the UI has far better students than most universities in the WAC, enjoy
that and build on that. Look at the flip side at BSU, sure
they were 12-1 this season, but their football student athletes obviously
are not there for the education and they proudly admit it. If
the Ada County dominated state legislature wants to keep supporting BSU
athletic greatness at the expense of football players, fine.<br>
<br>
Your cause, and the cause of the union, should be to force drastic cuts
within the central administration, that is where the problem really
exists. Stop attacking the one department that is largely
responsible for the diverse student body the UI enjoys.<br>
<br>
Happy New Year,<br>
Chris<br><br>
<br>
On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 10:41 AM,
<<a href="mailto:nickgier@roadrunner.com">nickgier@roadrunner.com</a>
> wrote:<br>
<dl>
<dd>Good Morning,<br><br>
<dd>This my radio commentary for Radio Free Moscow (KRFP 92.5 FM) for
tomorrow AM. The UI budget office has been closed for the holidays,
so I still need to gather more data. For example, I would like to
know the total number and amounts of the scholarship that UI departments
offer their students.<br><br>
<dd>Visionaries may be interested in "Back to the Big Sky," a
column that the UI union president and I did back in 2005. It can
be found at
<a href="http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/bigsky.htm">
www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/bigsky.htm</a>.<br><br>
<dd>Happy New Year,<br><br>
<dd>Nick Gier<br><br>
<dd>This is Nick Gier, the Palouse Pundit and state faculty union
president, talking about the UI financial emergency and the athletic
department.<br><br>
<dd>At the December 16 Faculty Council meeting, UI Provost Doug Baker was
asked to defend the break that UI athletics receives on an administrative
fee that all department pay to the central administration. Baker's
response was that our teams could not possibly succeed without this
favor.<br><br>
<dd>For years our departments have performed very well, far better than
men's football and basketball, all the while experiencing frequent budget
cuts and paying the full 8 percent fee on all external funds.<br><br>
<dd>UI athletics only pays 3 percent of its external funds to the central
administration. For FY2002 the athletics paid no administrative fee at
all, claiming that it had to reach gender equity goals. Many other
departments could have presented equally persuasive reasons why they too
should be exempt.<br><br>
<dd>For example, auxiliary services and facilities management generate
lots of external funds, and they could very well argue that their
salaries, 19 percent of which are below the poverty level, should rise
before they are required to pay the administrative fee.<br><br>
<dd>In the spring of 2005 then President Tim White, even though a faculty
committee recommended a $300,000 cut for athletics, chose instead to fire
27 staff employees in the physical plant.<br><br>
<dd>While most UI employees have gone without pay raises, the athletic
director enjoyed an 8 percent raise for FY09, and a salary line for
football coaches, who have lost a record number of football games, also
increased 8 percent.<br><br>
<dd>In a response to the December 16 Faculty Council discussion (The
Daily News, Dec. 17), the athletic department defended its low
administrative fee by saying that it returns $2.5 million back to the
university in "the form of tuition, fees, room and board for
scholarship students." Many other departments, however, do the
same with their own scholarship funds.<br><br>
<dd>If the implication of this claim is that athletics makes money for
UI, then this is clearly false. For FY09 the athletics department
estimated that it would take in $2.1 million dollars in student fees in
addition to a $3 million direct subsidy from the Legislature.<br><br>
<dd>A national study concluded that only nine athletic programs are able
to actually return money to their respective academic programs. Contrary
to conventional wisdom, winning athletic programs do not increase alumni
funding. As a Vice President at the University of Notre Dame says:
"There is no empirical evidence demonstrating a correlation between
athletic department achievement and alumni fund-raising
success."<br><br>
<dd>Winning football teams at Wisconsin, Michigan, UCLA, Texas, and
Washington correlate with a low ranking of 126, 128, 134, 136, and 144
respectively on a national alumni giving list. Coming from Oregon State,
President White once boasted about how much money its winning football
team brought in, but in FY05 the OSU athletic department had a $4 million
deficit.<br><br>
<dd>In the fall of 2005 the Faculty Council turned down a faculty union
request for a four-step phase out of the $3 million subsidy for
athletics. For most of the 1980s there was no such subsidy and the
Vandals won five Big Sky championships.<br><br>
<dd>The union's goal this time is much more modest: a simple request that
athletics pay its fair share of the administrative fee. University Budget
Committee member Jim Murphy agrees: "If my department in has to give
8 percent, then everybody else should pay 8 percent too."<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<dd>=======================================================<br>
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<dd>
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<dd>
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<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=2>"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the
application of it to human affairs."<br>
--Ralph Waldo Emerson<br><br>
"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings
who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."<br>
--Mohandas Gandhi<br><br>
"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot
be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each
part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on
the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our
intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science,
religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its
various parts." --Ma</font><font size=1>x Planck<br><br>
</font>Nicholas F. Gier<br>
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho<br>
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843<br>
<a href="http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/home.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/home.htm<br>
</a>208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950<br>
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO<br>
<a href="http://www.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/ift.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/ift.htm<br><br>
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