According to the University of Wisconsin regents, the dreaded \brain drain"" plague is poised to decimate Wisconsin's institutions of higher learning, and the only antidote is $5,000 more per year.
Last week, the UW System Board of Regents formally recommended to the Wisconsin Legislature a 5 percent salary raise for UW personnel-chiefly, the chancellors of each of the state's 13 public universities.
Should the omniscient Legislature approve this raise, but elect to deny state funds to pay for it, our tuition becomes Uncle Scrooge's money bin-and Chancellor John Wiley and his fellow UW administrative buddies are about to go for a swim.
The reasoning behind potentially raising our tuition by 1.2 percent next year-on top of an already proposed 4.3 percent raise-at least in the minds of the regents, emanates from the fear that, should their recommended increase not occur, qualified administrators will leave UW schools in favor of ""more competitive"" salaries elsewhere.
This scenario, my fellow UW System students, is a very real problem. Should the state Legislature decide to look out for us for once and hold off increasing our tuition, we may face our academic futures without Chancellor Wiley, our Captain Kirk of academia.
According to the UW System Web site, should a chancellor position become vacated, ""[Chancellor] searches begin with the President charging the institutional search and screen committee to forward at least five candidates to the President and the Special Regents Committee, and conclude with [the committee] forwarding their recommendation to the full Board of Regents. The recruitment process usually spans 5 to 7 months.""
Whew! That sounds like a ton of needlessly protracted, dull work. Let's face the reality here-because it's only a matter of days before Chancellor Wiley runs off to Howard University or ITT Tech for a $5,000 pay increase, we must expedite this lengthy chancellor-finding process immediately!
Regents, I have the perfect candidate to fill the chancellor void during this excruciatingly trying economic crisis. He knows UW-Madison like the back of his hand, he wants to improve the diversity of the academic environment on campus, and he will bend over backwards to get UW back to the number one position in every collegiate ranking-not just in partying!
My endorsement for the new UW-Madison Chancellor is none other than... me.
Bear with me on this one- ""Chancellor Peter N. Long"" actually makes some sense. Instead of raising the chancellor's $200,000 salary up by $5,000 each year, why not just keep the $200,000, use it to lower tuition for a change and throw the $5,000 my way for the same amount of work?
Installing me as chancellor of UW-Madison is a win-win for everyone. The professors will love me because I'll cut down class sizes and let them teach whatever they want. Teaching assistants will support me because any pay raises for faculty will go to them first. Students will embrace me because they'll finally have someone from their side on the other side. And prospective students-well heck, who wouldn't want to go to the only university in the nation with a 21-year-old chancellor rocking out every day?
There you have it, regents- problem solved. Save the administrative pay raises, lower tuition, bring back degree programs we've lost and finally accede to academic throne that is rightfully our own. The ball is in your court now-when do I start?
writePNL@yahoo.com.
