UT President Ends Tough Year With Another Battle
For Bill Powers, 2011 has been a year full of upheavals.
Certain issues were foreseeable for the president of the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s largest and arguably most prestigious public university. State lawmakers were heading into a legislative session with budget axes at the ready, and nationally there were questions about the value of higher education.
Then, in early February, when he should have been testifying at the Capitol about the university’s financial needs, Powers suffered a pulmonary embolism. He was in the hospital for a week.
It was the first struggle in a year ...
Comments (2)
T D
Let me get this straight: Thomas Lindsay, speaking for a group bankrolled by shadowy private interests to criticize public education, criticizes the distribution of money by a shadowy private interest to support public education . . . . for not being "transparent."
Can the rich not talk this out on the golf course and save us the drama?
Tom Horn
Let's not forget the continuing fallout from the Cactus Cafe fiasco--the firestorm which University Unions Executive Director Andy Smith ignited in a ham-fisted effort to preserve a 2% raise pool of the sort from which he has previously scurried to grab himself a 7.99925% hunk--all the while contending that no money existed to reward the rank and file under his regime.
Why 7.99925%? Because special approval was required for a raise of 8% or more.
The mess exploded into the public eye despite Mr. Smith's longtime custom of running from the light. A notable casualty of the brouhaha was the Informal Class program, which had turned a profit until Smith appointed someone with no previous retail experience, no business acumen and no rapport with her staff to head Informal Classes.
And just days from now, Vice-President for Student Affairs Juan C. Gonzalez (head of the division where Mr. Smith is still employed, despite his brazen history) steps down in a "return to teaching" after seeing his office's portfolio diminished by fiat from on high.