<p>Right on the money. It is a publicity stunt and the cost is probably a small portion of what is spent on attracting applicants and selling the value of the college through marketing efforts.</p>
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<p>Not much different that what that (then) bearded and overweight buffoon did after being tossed on the curb by the electors and his Clinton buddies. It worked as its wealth can attest. </p>
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<p>Perhaps, but how much will Petraus really need to “prepare” to “teach” this class. Is anyone thinking he will have to cover a certain subject and develop a curriculum? What are the chances that the school will find a couple of “helping hands” to dig some relevant reading assignments and grade the papers? Chences are that the General will just need a few hours before and after his gig. </p>
<p>As far as the other professors, it also remains frustrating to hear how much the academics work, how much they need to prepare, and how underpaid they are. Frustrating because many of us know that the reality is quite different as we look at the activities of family members who happen to be professors. In October, December, and from May to August!</p>
<p>Status quo…what’s the problem here? CC may not like this person’s political position but there is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary…With proper positioning one can garner a Nobel Peace Prize and will be guaranteed many a professorship/speaker ship position…buy your admissions tickets while they last…</p>
<p>I didn’t see one comment on this thread questioning Petraeus’ politics. Heck, I don’t even know what his politics are. </p>
<p>Some of us are questioning the priorities of a resource-starved university like CUNY spending $150K/year to have a celebrity teach one seminar and spend, probably on average, a half-day a week on campus. According to the AAUP, the average full professor at CUNY makes $140K/year; the average associate professor makes $93K; and the average assistant professor $63K. For what they’re paying the celebrity to teach one seminar, they could just about hire one full-time associate professor and one full-time assistant professor and cover, what, 8 or 10 full courses a year? Or they could hire 6 non-celebrity adjuncts and cover maybe 25 or 30 courses a year.</p>
<p>But of course, that wouldn’t buy them mention in the NY Times and buzz on CC.</p>
<p>Would you feel differently if this were a private university with huge coffers? IOW, is it the price tag itself, or the fact that it’s a public university?</p>
<p>For some reason, I doubt that BClinton is looking at this as a public versus private, but essentially at the nature and mission of the school who did the hiring. The question seems to be about the rationale for CUNY to hire a big name over the type of professors who should better fit the profile and the budget of the school.</p>
<p>The --rather obvious-- fact that is appears just as much as the sinecure offered by a Chicago hospital to Mrs. Obama does not make it easier to applaud. In a time where austerity is most lips, it appears that the spending of public dollars still fail to be correctly scrutinized.</p>
<p>PS I wonder how long it will take for Mini to add his “Betrayus” line. ;)</p>
<p>They’re not always happy about what goes on at private universities. Want a cheap, maybe forgivable, mortgage for your second home on Fire Island? Teach at NYU. </p>
<p>If Harvard spent $150K to have a celebrity teach one seminar, I’d think they were being frivolous with their money, but it wouldn’t concern me much because they they have oodles of money. Heck, they could take a wheelbarrow containing $150,000 in small bills out into a field and burn it, and no one would notice, or care.</p>
<p>Most colleges and universities, public and private, don’t have that kind of money. Most of them have been saying “no” to faculty raises since the onset of the Great Recession, or are only now getting around to 1 or 2% raises after years of salary freezes. Many have “furloughed” faculty and/or staff–basically, just forced them to take unpaid days or weeks–to make ends meet. The vast majority, public and private, don’t come close to meeting 100% of need for students with financial need. Under such circumstances, a decision to pay a celebrity $150K—the price of a full-time full professor at CUNY, or an associate professor plus an assistant professor–seems beyond frivolous, it strikes me as just downright fiscally irresponsible, and a slap in the face of the faculty, staff, and students who have been repeatedly told “No, we don’t have the money, we all need to share the sacrifice to keep the lights on.”</p>
<p>I don’t know the details of CUNY’s financial situation, but I can see from their common data sets that they meet full need for only about 80% of their students with need, and on average meet only 83% of need. In short, a large fraction of their undergrads get “gapped” on financial aid. And their undergrads are not affluent: 90+% of them have financial need, according to CUNY, and about half the students across the CUNY system are Pell grant recipients.</p>
<p>How can you justify spending $150K to have a celebrity teach one seminar and interact with maybe a couple of dozen students, while at the same time telling some kid who may not have enough scratch to be able to return to finish her senior year, “Sorry, our FA budget just ran out, you’ll need to find a way to cover the difference on your own”? I can’t.</p>
<p>Summer seminar.<br>
“…one three-credit summer seminar class and giving two speeches open to the entire university. His salary for the single summer class is $200,000. CUNY is attempting to fund Petraeus’ salary through independent donations. The school declined to answer whether the funds had been raised and it appears taxpayers are on the hook for the full $200,000.”</p>
<p>After a certain amount of grousing, I’d be curious if they and similar tier schools had done this before, how common it is, how usual it is to be underwritten by a large donor, etc.</p>
<p>^^ exactly.
I wouldnt even blink if it was NYU, or Cornell but the CUNY schools arent even considered by many on CC because they are so budget strapped.</p>
<p>Is this something that is going to benefit the many at their school, or the few?
Sounds like the few.</p>
<p>Oh no, you are not disappointing me. I don’t doubt for a second that there will be people claiming she had a real job at the hospital. The evidence, however, was pretty clear that the job did not existed before Mrs. Obama was hired, and that the “important” job was not offered to anyone after her departure for greener pastures. The sinecure was created for a specidic purpose and it ended when a better one became available.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, I also have no doubt that it would be pretty crazy for anyone associated with the hospital to deviate from the “official” version of what Mrs. Obama did in fact do for the hospital as vice president of community and external affairs . As far as the ROI, there is also little doubt that it did fit rather well in the usual Chicago politics. A rising Senator is worth its pot of gold, especially when mentored as he was. This was clearly reflected in Mrs. O’s large salary increase as soon as hubby made it to the US Senate.</p>
<p>Michelle Obama was not exactly plucked out of the kitchen by U of C Hospitals and given a handsomely paid make-work job. She was (and is) a highly competent professional, well connected in Chicago legal, political, and community circles, with degrees from Princeton and Harvard Law. She worked at one of Chicago’s most prestigious law firms, then in the mayor’s office, then in a senior position in the city’s planning department, then as executive director of a major not-for-profit working to connect inner city youth to internship opportunities and leadership training, then as Associate Dean for Student Services at the University of Chicago where her signature accomplishment was to develop a center for community service, then as executive director of community services for U of C Hospitals before being named Vice President for Community and External Affairs there. It’s pretty clear, I think, that her connections were not just to her husband, but to the city’s legal establishment, the mayor’s office, the city’s planning department, and the South Side African-American community, of which she (unlike her husband) was a native, and where she had established strong networks through her various community service endeavors.</p>
<p>This is nothing to be sneezed at. The University of Chicago is a wealthy, multi-billion dollar, predominantly white institution sitting uneasily on an island in the middle of Chicago’s predominantly African-American, and largely poor, South Side. One of the principal ways the university connects with, serves, and makes its peace with its South Side neighbors is through its health and hospitals system, which provides jobs, health care services, charity care, free and paid community health clinics, community health needs assessments, wellness education, and much more to the greater South Side community. Managing all that–and managing the political and PR and community relations aspects of it–is not exactly light work. Whether the particular job title held by Michelle Obama preceded her or survived her is just an absurd trivia question–or, more likely, a political spinner’s debating point, meant to obfuscate rather than to elucidate. What’s clear is that the job that was assigned to her was a critically important and highly sensitive one for the University of Chicago; that she was eminently qualified to perform it; that by all accounts she performed it admirably; and that someone did that job before her arrival on the scene, and someone continues to do that job to this day, under whatever the particular job title, because it involves matters that are really of life-or-death strategic importance to the University of Chicago.</p>
<p>Michelle Obama MADE Barak Obama. Truly. She is the brains in that operation.</p>
<p>I’m not saying he’s not bright and articulate and interesting. I’m just saying that she is the one who made the network, the connections, the introductions, and she is the one who opened all of the doors for him.</p>
<p>Don’t joke. Michelle Obama is incredibly connected in Chicago and anybody would have been happy to have her work for them, with them, whatever. It’s more like her position led to HIS position.</p>
<p>People outside of Chicago frequently get this backward.</p>
<p>I know next to nothing about Chicago. However, within a university system, if a job title is created for a person, and then ceases to exist when the person leaves, that does not usually indicate that the position was a sinecure. Instead, it usually means that the person has specific skills that the university needs, the university needs to move the person up, and the people holding the existing higher-level positions aren’t going anywhere. The creation and elimination of Vice Presidential titles is a fairly common practice in this situation.</p>
<p>Yes, this is exactly right. It’s that way in a lot of organizations, too. It means nothing that that specific job title didn’t “continue”. Big whoops – large organizations re-structure and change job titles and functions all the time. This is the kind of thing that is seized on by people who want to make some partisan type of point, but it doesn’t reflect well on how well they understand large organizations.</p>
<p>More generally, it is true that many American professors earn far more than their foreign counterparts. Compared to a prof at Oxford or Cambridge, a Harvard professor earns much more money for much less teaching.</p>