http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-berkeley-provost-resigns-20160415-story.html
Lasted a whole two years. With three years experience at Stanford as a dean and 3 years at Columbia as a Provost. Wow…
It seems senior administration folks are quick to resign, since they usually can keep their tenured positions and most if not all of the pay…great golden parachutes.
Steele is a highly accomplished scholar. I have read and learned from much of his work, especially regarding the phenomenon of “stereotype threat” (see Wikipedia). Alas, he had severe weaknesses as an administrator. He deserved to be dismissed from that role.
this could just be a classic case of the Peter Principle. Yes, Steele is a world-class researcher and scholar, but perhaps he is just not that great a manager, particularly at a public school, with activist faculty; they’ll smell out any weakness and exploit it. Nothing to see here.
Nothing to see except continued fallout from brushing harrassment of women under the rug.
@Gator88NE – it’s not a golden parachute. Steele - and many other university admins - were tenured professors before they got their administrative gigs. There would be no faculty willing to go into administration if they knew there was a chance they could lose their job – a job they trained their entire professional career for. Now, if you want to argue that faculty shouldn’t go into administration, that’s fine. Just know the costs will go through the roof, because the faculty route is cheaper. I know, hubby was a professor who became an associate dean. His salary was still about 30% less than comparable management salaries in the private sector.
Do you know what UC’s policy is regarding a (first time?) finding of sexual harassment and firing tenured faculty members?
Steele did take some punitive action against the Boalt Dean. In 20-20 hindsight, and to an outsider, it looks rather anemic, but unless we know what the written policy is, we have no way to know if the action could have/should have been. I would be shocked if UC has an approved, written policy, of one-strike and you’re fired.
@katliamom I was thinking of the habit of Provost and Presidents to structural their “deals” with an out that includes a tenured position and other significant/crazy financial benefits not available to a faculty member.
I just read a story on how Chancellor R Bowen Loftin (who resigned last November) is still earning his full salary, until his new “post” is ready (that will pay him 75% of his current salary).
Once things got a bit hairy at UM, he quickly resigned. When he resigned as TAMU’s President, his deal was even better (google “Loftin’s Deal Points document”).
A provost or university president is a huge job. Similar to that of a CEO’s. So no wonder the salaries are high and the perks are good. Still, compared to the private sector, these salaries/perks are fairly modest, and the parachutes aren’t nearly as golden.
I have to say that attending newly admitted students day at UCLA and at Cal was rather depressing (especially at Cal). There was so much talk about the “new normal” and the tour guide kept mentioning how many students needed to stay on for a fifth year because courses were cancelled or not even sections were offered. We strolled by one of the libraries and even the librarian was talking about the cuts and reduced hours.
Combined with the controversy over OOS students, and the Claremont College’s were a welcome respite. Sad really.
Sigh… Depressing is right…
That has been claimed for the last decade, but it is contradicted by rising 4, 5, and 6 year graduation rates (which are higher than predicted by students’ HS GPAs and SAT/ACT scores).
However, it is certainly a possibility that students are less likely to get into popular out-of-major elective courses, since priority in course registration is typically given to those in the majors that need those courses. The impacted majors situation exists because departments do not want to enroll more students as majors than they can provide class space for. Actually, it is the impacted majors situation that may be more of a concern to students who want to major in something that requires a high GPA to enter the major – you can graduate on time, but perhaps not in your intended major. Probably at least part of the reason for this is the apparent movement to maximize enrollment, since any unused space is “wasted”. Of course, to the extent that students’ desired majors are not in the same proportion as available capacity in each major, the impacted majors situation gets worse (of course, the rapid rise in the popularity of CS does not help).