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?