Trim fat from university

The University of Southern Maine provided me with an excellent education which may not be available to students in the future. As a graduate of the nursing program, I found employment at Boston Children’s Hospital and worked my way through a graduate program at Boston College. My experiences in the University of Maine System prepared me for those challenges. I am concerned that the quality education I received is being lost.

Much has been written about competitiveness, management style, and overpaid executives. During these tight budgetary times, close examination of executive salaries in the University of Maine is in order.

Between the inception of the University of Maine System and today, there has been an unprecedented building of bureaucracy. While the student body has grown modestly, the number of associate bureaucrats, assistant bureaucrats, and vice bureaucrats has grown dramatically.

The students and public have not benefited from this increase in the management structure. The payouts of fringe benefits, housing allowances and other perks adds more than 27 percent to the generous salary base provided to executives. These payouts are detrimental to the system’s ability to perform its mission.

What is wrong is more than the loss of funds. More insidious than the high salaries is the callous indifference of highly paid executives to concerns of students, staff and policymakers. This arrogance, so apparent at Board of Trustees meetings and before the legislature, undermines confidence in the institution. The University System needs the commitment of all Maine citizens. What the students, staff, and public perceive is the executive’s cynical message: I got mine!

A recent poll of middle managers, cited in Newsweek, found that 84 percent of those polled think executives are overpaid. What everyone is waiting for is a leadership example. Unfortunately, what is seen is executives taking inordinate stipends while classes are stripped from students, services to the public curtailed, and workers lose their jobs.

The chancellor and his associates have a great advantage. Executive compensation is set by a friendly Board of Trustees who rely on the advice of consultants who have been recommended by the chancellor. The consultants bring a false cloak of objectivity to a process which is totally self-serving.

Maine can no longer afford the “Super U.” A council made up of the campus presidents could administer the system. The University of Maine has several vacant buildings which could house the systemwide services. Chancellor’s offices in Bangor and Augusta could be closed.

Most of the professional staff in the chancellor’s office could return to teaching or duties at various sites without harming services to the students or the public.

The Board of Trustees will not make such a proposal. Action to trim the fat at the University System will have to come from the Legislature. The time has come to adjust the bureaucracy so Maine citizens receive the quality they expect and deserve from their University System. Karen E. Dodd Bangor