CU College Administrators in the 1%

In a move sure to baffle education critics - and the average taxpayer - the University of Colorado apparently used new revenues to provide substantial pay increases to top administrators at the campus. This comes on top of news that CU will again be hiking tuition a whopping 16% - a move which was defended by CU President Bruce Benson in a recent op-ed in the Denver Post. Most egregious of the increases appears to be a $49,000 increase to Chancellor Phil DiStefano, who will now be earning $390,000 a year.

The CU Board of Regents expressed outrage at the moves - and it's tough to blame theme. Even if the criticism from the Regents can be a bit political at times, college administrators pulling in nearly $400K is almost too much. Granted, Benson reasonably argues that CU's pay is not out of line with the nationwide average. And he needs these offers to remain competitive. And the state wants CU to be a top, competitive state university.

But seriously?

The chancellor of a university is a tough sell to be making more money than a surgeon. Obviously, he has a serious job that requires high quality leadership. There is much we don't know about the intricacies of that job. But perhaps that is the problem. How can leading a university be more "valuable" than leading a state government or Congress or the United States of America ... or an open heart surgery. Education funding is clearly a bubble right now, and there must be excellent leaders who will take CU to the Promised land for half the money. Right?

University Presidents on the Drinking Age

This issue, and the recent position taken by one hundred university presidents, begs the question of how effectively we can legislate behavior and whether legalizing a behavior makes it less dangerous. It is our culture's unhealthy attitude toward alcohol that encourages binge drinking, not current laws. In fact, the drinking age has worked quite well for many years; though there has been an increase in binge drinking in the last ten years, the percentage of underage drinking has gone down. I concur that some students "load up" with alcohol before going out, but a lower drinking age will not suddenly create a society where college students are drinking casually (and in less quantity) in bars under the watchful eyes of police and university administrators. Additionally a majority of Americans favor maintaining the current drinking age.

While there is a legitimate argument that an individual who is a "legal adult" at the age of eighteen should have access to full rights and privileges, it is a bit of a non sequiter to associate military service with alcohol consumption. The argument that if a young man/woman is going to fight and die for his/her country, he should be able to legally get drunk before he goes is not exactly a sound argument. What does one have to do with the other? Additionally, though I know it is not the primary reason for the law, there is significant research that shows considerably greater damage to brain development in consumption before the age of about twenty-one. That may not have been the original intent of the current age restriction, its benefit shouldn't be discounted. Finally, while MADD activists may be hyperbolic, they are accurate in their assertions about decreased drunk driving statistics.

The argument that "everybody's doing it anyway" has never been a valid position for legalizing behavior. To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh on handing out condoms to kids: "If kids are going to do it anyway why doesn't the state provide a dorm full of in-house, disease-free hookers, with ample supplies of drugs and alcohol, for students to have safe relations with under the watchful eye of government nurses and administrators."