One man’s biased opinion stated as fact.
Absolutely.
This is the typical hypocrisy of smug academic elites. Academic elites like to hold themselves out as far more noble in purpose than money-grubbing "corporations" but these same elites are more than happy to demand corporate CEO-level compensation packages in the name of "paying a market price" for high-level academic bureaucrats.
Nathan Hatch is one of the most highly paid college presidents in the US, pulling down comp well into seven figures. Ron Wellman is one of the most highly paid ADs in the ACC and USA. But don't dare ask about accountability for their management failures! They are ACADEMICS, pure of heart who cannot be compared to those money-grubbing corporate types. Don't dare question their salaries or expect them to hold themselves accountable.
I love Wake Forest but Wake has become a racket, just like American higher education in general. The students and their families are charged obscene prices to attend while a handful of favored academic elites pull down obscene salaries, while a supine Board of Trustees comprised of wealthy potted plants contents itself with attending nice dinners and sitting in the president's box, while NEVER interfering with the actual management -- or mismanagement -- of the enterprise.
Think a little bit about what you're saying here: that those *outside* the academy know better how to run a university than those that live and work and spend all of their time thinking about how to make it a more welcoming, innovative, and dynamic place for new generations of students.
I've been one of the most vocal critics on these boards of administrative bloat both at wake forest and elsewhere. And I think you're right about some of the criticisms you make here about both Hatch and implicitly about others. **But it is a mistake to conflate faculty and administration, even if the latter frequently draw their ranks from the former.** and this is what you're doing when you talk about the "elites demanding corporate CEO-level compensation packages" and opining smugly about academic freedom or whatever. Faculty across the country typically don't get paid like those in industry, and increasingly the protections and security and benefits that distanced the "ivory tower" from everybody else are being stripped for political purposes. Do you know what non-TT instructors get paid nowadays? 3k a course. If they're lucky. Also, the idea that Wellman is (or is considered) an "academic" is laughable.
And to be fair, the BOT (or its equivalent) is itself the governing body of many universities, and it is composed of the corporate- and industry-types that many seem to think would do the best job running higher education. It's an experiment that has tried and failed, because a CEO first looks to cut units that seem not to be producing income, disregarding the important fact (in my opinion) that the *sole purpose* of a University education is not necessarily just to achieve a job.
You've got a legit gripe with a number of problems in higher education. Shit sucks in a ton of ways, many of which would never come up in conversation on these boards. I'm not here to defend Hatch against your criticisms, most of all because I share many of them. But I'm writing to tell you that your argument here about the "smug elitists" that ostensibly defend the over-paying and lacking accountability of administrators like hatch is misplaced. These are the very people that care most deeply about education, and many of them are themselves victims of an oppressive and often racist system.
TLDR: be mad at Hatch, the BOT, whatever, but my "biased opinion stated as fact" (DistrictDeac) is one born out of first-hand, everyday experience. If y'all have similar experience (exceeding "I went to college" or "higher education seems to me mismanaged" or "wake basketball sucks and it's Hatch's fault"), then I'd love to chat about it here with you.
