Cut of the Day

David Harrison, Vice Provost of the Regional Campuses. He makes 165K a year, and he is unnecessary to the day-to-day operations of the regional campuses. He’s one of those “big thinker” types. Because in the foreseeable future, there will be no money for grandiose plans, his dismissal is a good way to reduce a bloated administrative budget.

Thank You, Contributors

At first, this blog was a fun hobby. After a while, I got bored with it. Readers probably noticed my boredom because I was barely posting. I felt bad about this because even when I was only posting a few times a month readership was steady.

Lately, writing the blog has been fun again. There are two reasons. First, because of budget cuts, the administration’s assholerie has prominently manifested itself. Second, an increasing number of readers have sent in excellent information and analysis.

At first, this blog was a solo effort to document UCF’s low academic standards, waste, and corruption. Now, if this blog is on point or entertaining, then the correspondents deserve a lot of the credit.

Hypocrisy Watch

As you may have heard, UCF is getting sued because a football player passed away during a practice.

From the Orlando Sentinel:

UCF has aggressively pursued hearing dates to settle its motion for summary judgment and a separate motion to treat the UCFAA as a state agency protected by the Florida cap on payment of settlements. The UCFAA is a direct-support organization and repeatedly has identified itself as a private corporation in the past.

UCF wants to have it both ways on this. Recently, they refused a public records request for salary information on UCFAA employees because they contend that those employees are not state employees. When they get sued, they want to say the UCFAA is a state agency that should be protected by the cap on civil judgments.

Pay Cut of the Day

During this recession, many corporations – and we know how UCF loves to fancy themselves a corporation – have resorted to pay cuts. Here’s somebody that could stand a pay cut. Robert Holmes, head of the UCF foundation, makes 225K year. This is over double what he made ten years ago.

During the good times, there was a consistent trend at UCF to give extraordinary raises to high level administrators (Holmes isn’t an isolated example). I wonder how many USPS employees have doubled their salary in the last decade at UCF.

Priorities

From the Orlando Sentinel:

UCF is giving $166,080 to the athletics association this year, a 60 percent drop from last year's contribution of $393,487. The athletics association also is poised to make a $300,000 payment to the university, the first of 12 annual payments to pay back a $8.7 million loan taken out to make all athletics programs more competitive. "The level of loans we've made is not material to the university's financial health, but it's very important to understand that those are really loans and not grants and that integrity of the process is being respected," Hitt said.

A reader wrote:

How can the level of loans NOT be "material to the university's financial health?" The loans are $8.7 million. The closed programs supposedly cost $6.7 million, right? And, if the university is in such dire straits that it needs to close programs, wouldn't it be demanding that athletics pay some of that money back? Rather than giving them MORE money?

A Charitable Cause for Idiots and Assholes

In these tough times, it is more important than ever to contribute to the most worthy causes. I can think of nothing more important than erecting a statue of Charles Millican.

New Revenue Source of the Day

Victoria's Secret is going to make a line of UCF lingerie. A reader wrote:

We may not have engineering technology anymore, but at least we've got lingerie. Wonder which administrators will model?

Cuts of the Day (Without Naming Names)*

UCF has grown a lot in the past ten years. From 1998 to 2008, Fall headcount went from 30,009 to 50,275. This is an increase of 68 percent. You know what has grown faster than UCF enrollment? The number of fancy pants UCF administrators who possess over-rated qualities like vision and leadership. Take a look at the following table which depicts the number of UCF employees in various leadership positions:

Classification	1998	2008
VP	8	9
Associate VP	8	28
Assistant VP	7	26
Vice Provost	0	6
Total	23	69

From 1998 to 2008, enrollment increased 68 percent, but the number of skill-less fucks with fancy titles increased 200 percent. Keep in mind that administrators at this level typically make at least double what the average associate professor earns. If university administrators end up eliminating academic departments but do nothing to reduce their own ranks, then it will be a testament to their absolute indifference to students.

* Thanks to a reader for developing the content of this post. I just added the swear words.

Cut of the Day on Hiatus

I have a lot more ways for UCF to stop wasting money, but I have to give some thought as to how I want to present them. Some people are useless and deserve to be called out. Others are useless but don’t deserve the shame.

Cut of the Day

UCF administrators who have retired and returned. There are people in this group that could be let go with no impact on students.

Cut of the Day

Division of Community Relations. I have already mentioned a couple of their employees, but the whole office is a budgetary cancer that needs to be cut out. Just look at their mission statement (It reads like it was written by a child, albeit a bright one):

The mission of the Division of Community Relations is to cultivate, maintain and enhance the link between UCF and the various publics it serves and to create and implement community-based programs to increase knowledge and understanding of the university within key external communities. Individually and as a unit, the division is active in all aspects of the community, communicating about UCF's mission, culture and objectives to various constituencies and planning and implementing a wide range of activities and events.

Friday’s Cut of the Day – Thinking Outside the Box

“Thinking outside the box” is one of those annoying terms that strategic management consultants throw around to sound smart. Because UCF loves these dumb-fuck consultants, the term is appropriate for Friday’s suggested cut. Although I don’t think any of my suggested cuts will ever happen, Friday’s cut of the day is going to be very unlikely to occur.

Here is today’s suggestion. President Hitt makes about 600K a year. More than half of his salary is provided by suckers foolish enough to donate to the UCF foundation (the other part comes from the state). If Hitt were to take 300K of his salary – the part that is donated to him – and give it back to UCF to save an academic program, he would be a god damn hero. This donation could completely save radiologic sciences or part of another program slated to be cut. Think about it, Johnny, the local media would go nuts, and I’m pretty sure your generosity would get national attention.

Cut of the Day

Karen Jans. You knew she was going to make the list. Senator Evelyn Lynn’s daughter makes 83K a year. That is 27 percent of the yearly budget for the soon to be gone Radiologic Science program.

Cut of the Day

UCF News and Information. Spin doctoring is not central to the mission of offering a quality education. UCF can keep on getting bad press without spending all that money.

Cut of the Day

Metropolitan Center for Regional Studies. The director is Linda Chapin, a politician who parlayed her connections into a lucrative sinecure. The loss of this unit would have no impact on students.

Snarky Comment

Do you think Hickey could be a kind of reverse Pinocchio (i.e., whenever he lies he gets shorter)?

Suggestions for Cuts

Over the summer, I’m going to post suggestions for budget cuts. These could be a person or a unit. Because wasting money is a bad idea in even good economic times, these will be cuts that should be made even if the budget situation were better.

As of late, some readers have opened my eyes to gigantic wastes of money at UCF. So, if you want to make a case for a cut, send an email.

They Will Keep Themselves

The announced layoffs hit the faculty hard. Among the employees to be laid off, 88 percent are faculty and only 12 percent are staff. This proportion is much different than the one offered by Provost Hickey when he said the sky was falling. At that time, the distribution of layoffs would have been 63 percent faculty and 37 percent staff.

Now, it is true that Hickey has said that the administrative budget will be cut by 3.1 percent or 3.7 million and presumably this means more staff cuts. However, no specifics have been offered. Here’s my prediction: Hickey is lying. Hickey probably enjoyed cutting programs that didn’t earn (i.e., produce a lot of student credit hours), but he will not want to cut his own people (i.e., useless high level administrators).

UCF Announces a Layoff List (sort of)

Go read the article.

It is interesting that UCF is specific about which programs are likely to be cut, but they offer no details about how they plan to cut 3.7 million dollars in administrative costs.

I’ll have more thoughts later.

The Sky isn’t Falling, but it Might Rain

The Petite Provost has issued an update:

This loss of recurring state dollars will require us to move beyond the “financial belt tightening” we have performed so far and will force us to consider program eliminations and layoffs, though not of the magnitude we previously discussed when faced with a larger cut.