Ex-Rutgers boss paid $480K for a sabbatical is actually never coming back

[Tango Two]

A former Rutgers University official given a $480,000 one-year sabbatical to refresh and refocus before returning to teach at the university will instead take the money and never turn back.


https://www.nj.com/education/2019/0...sabbatical-is-actually-never-coming-back.html

 

[ElmiraExpress]

A former Rutgers University official given a $480,000 one-year sabbatical to refresh and refocus before returning to teach at the university will instead take the money and never turn back.


https://www.nj.com/education/2019/0...sabbatical-is-actually-never-coming-back.html

This was known as soon as Barchi fired him. It isn’t new news at all. Dutta was the best hire Barchi ever made, but soon he become threatened by his assumed authority and popularity among everyone at Rutgers

 

[retired711]

Everyone knew this. The "sabbatical" amounted to severance pay for a hire who (according to Barchi) had not worked out.

 

[DJ Spanky]

This is about as newsworthy as Josh and Ted reporting on Schiano's salary.

 

[srru86]

One of the louder mouthed, lesser informed, members of the legislature is trying to make this a thing. Gonna make it illegal.

He clearly doesn't understand this is standard practice in senior academic hiring. No one leaves a tenured position without a guarantee.

Legislation on this is as a bright an idea as the salary cap for school superintendents.

Always fun to watch the folks that worship at the temple of free enterprise using the coercive power of government to regulate the labor market.

My guess is like most of these things it's going nowhere. Unless the Norcross machine picks up the mantle as another way to hammer RU for thwarting their plan$.

 

[srru86]

MLive.com
New UM-Flint chancellor looks to bring campus, community together

 

[retired711]

MLive.com
New UM-Flint chancellor looks to bring campus, community together

Actually, Dutta's vision of being chancellor at New Brunswick -- that he would be the chief executive officer of the campus -- made a lot of sense. It is the model followed, for instance, at the University of California, where the chancellors run the campuses and the president's office works on university-wide issues, of which there are many.

 

[DJ Spanky]

Too bad Barchi ran off possibly the best hire he ever made.

 

[retired711]

Too bad Barchi ran off possibly the best hire he ever made.

It's pretty typical of Rutgers presidents to want to run the NB campus. Fran Lawrence (boo!) actually abolished the job of chancellor (then called provost) at NB because, according to what I was told, "he didn't understand the position."

 

[RUnTeX]

It's pretty typical of Rutgers presidents to want to run the NB campus. Fran Lawrence (boo!) actually abolished the job of chancellor (then called provost) at NB because, according to what I was told, "he didn't understand the position."

Fran was pretty much an idiot. Isn't a provost the highest academic authority for a university, i.e. a "chief academic officer," if you will? That role would be limited in comparison to a president of a university, who is the CEO. Fran probably felt threatened or wasn't a very good delegator if he saw the provost position as redundant to his own.

 

[retired711]

Fran was pretty much an idiot. Isn't a provost the highest academic authority for a university, i.e. a "chief academic officer," if you will? That role would be limited in comparison to a president of a university, who is the CEO. Fran probably felt threatened or wasn't a very good delegator if he saw the provost position as redundant to his own.

Agree about Fran. "Provost" was the title then given to heads of the Camden and Newark campuses. In practice, they did the same work that a chancellor did, which is why the title was changed. Fran should have recognized that, just as someone was needed to run Camden and Newark on a day-to-day basis, someone was needed to do the same at NB to free the president to do his job of running the university as a whole.

 

[RUnTeX]

Actually, Dutta's vision of being chancellor at New Brunswick -- that he would be the chief executive officer of the campus -- made a lot of sense. It is the model followed, for instance, at the University of California, where the chancellors run the campuses and the president's office works on university-wide issues, of which there are many.

I think part of the problem could stem from co-location of the president's office and residence, both being located on the NB/P campus. At UC, the president's office is in Oakland and not part of any of its 10 campuses, and I'm assuming the president's residence is also not located on the Berkeley campus, for example.

The org chart at U of Michigan shows that there is a president and chancellors for Dearborn and Flint, but not a separate one for Ann Arbor, which is where the president operates from.

 

[RUnTeX]

Agree about Fran. "Provost" was the title then given to heads of the Camden and Newark campuses. In practice, they did the same work that a chancellor did, which is why the title was changed. Fran should have recognized that, just as someone was needed to run Camden and Newark on a day-to-day basis, someone was needed to do the same at NB to free the president to do his job of running the university as a whole.

Agreed, so it was a chancellor type role, just named provost....that does sound familiar from my time as a student in the 90s.

 

[retired711]

I think part of the problem could stem from co-location of the president's office and residence, both being located on the NB/P campus. At UC, the president's office is in Oakland and not part of any of its 10 campuses, and I'm assuming the president's residence is also not located on the Berkeley campus, for example.

The org chart at U of Michigan is that there is a president and chancellors for Dearborn and Flint, but not a separate one for Ann Arbor.

For many years, the President of UC had his office in University Hall, just across the street from the Berkeley campus. That's where the state-wide operation was. Having the president do only state-wide stuff is I not a perfect arrangement. I'll admit. Until 1960, the president was also head of the Berkeley campus. Then a chancellor was appointed for Berkeley and the president's responsibilities were solely state-wide. In 1964, the Berkeley chancellor banned political tables from the campus's entrance. That led to the Free Speech Movement and a lot of turbulence. I took a seminar later from the then-president, Clark Kerr, and he said he had wanted to overrule the chancellor's decision, but refrained from doing so because he didn't want to undercut the chancellor. Still (and with deference to U. Mich.) I think it is a better arrangement for the president to confine himself to statewide activities.