A good department chair is hard to find. Mine makes more than twice the average professor’s salary here. He teaches one course a semester. Dumps his busy work on staff. Scrolls Instagram during meetings. He’s in Japan right now. Or Australia. Honestly, I can’t remember.
Our chair only aspires to be like our president, who owns three luxury vehicles and spends every weekend at some country club, or on the slopes, or at a wine tasting.
Lawmakers in our state have sowed distrust of universities into the public, but for all the wrong reasons. They assume we, the faculty, make too much money. That we don’t teach marketable skills. That we’re lazy. Or that we’re harboring illegal immigrants.
Politicians never complain about the money our campus spends on landscaping, though. Or the hundreds of thousands we’re pouring into a football team that draws anemic crowds and pretty much always loses. They say nothing about my provost’s Bentley.