Robbing the poor

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President, provost, deans ax own salaries





By: Devin Banerjee
December 3, 2008  

University will slash nearly $100 million over next two years

Stanford University’s financial investments have continued to lose traction, sliding further down the nation’s slippery economic slope into what Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ‘82 — the University’s chief budgetary officer — is calling a “worsened” investment climate.

In light of the investment declines, Etchemendy and University President John Hennessy will immediately cut their own salaries by 10 percent, according to an email sent by the provost to some 12,000 faculty and staff members on Tuesday. A recent report by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that Hennessy brought home a total compensation of $701,501 during the 2006-2007 year.

Each of Stanford’s deans has also volunteered to take a salary reduction.

In addition, Etchemendy and Hennessy may axe further into Stanford’s general funds budget, chopping as much as $100 million from the $800 million budget over the next two years. This prediction has been upped from the administrators’ October estimate of a $45 million cut per year.

“We now anticipate a need for deeper, permanent reductions in the general funds budget, which funds most of our faculty and staff salaries, central administrative operations and non-research expenses,” Etchemendy wrote in Tuesday’s email.

Last month, the provost asked each unit of the University to submit reduction scenarios for a three percent cut, a five percent cut and a seven percent cut. Those three numbers have now been upped respectively to five, seven and 10, “in the context of an overall plan to eliminate 15 percent over the next two years.”

Still, Etchemendy noted that he is being cautious, and that the reductions may not be that severe.

“The ultimate cuts may not have to be this deep,” he said, “but we would be irresponsible not to prepare for this eventuality.”

Part of this preparation will include “unavoidable” layoffs, according to the provost. At the same time, he and the president will try to reduce the impact of layoffs by implementing hiring freezes to preserve some employment, providing a retirement incentive program in certain units and granting some employees the option to permanently reduce their work hours. Where layoffs are the only option, an “enhanced severance program” may also be provided.

Additional details on these programs will be provided in January, according to Tuesday’s email.

Stanford’s budget cuts will also delay or halt campus construction projects. In an interview with The Daily early last month, the provost explained how University officials decide which projects will continue and which will not.

“Any project that is currently underway is going to keep moving,” Etchemendy said. “Further, we will move forward any project that is a donor-supported project with a naming gift, because of the donor’s expectations.”

Although he did not mention specifics, the provost said the remainder of Stanford’s construction projects will be prioritized according to “academic need,” then halted and delayed starting from the bottom.

On Tuesday, following similar announcements recently made at Dartmouth and Brown, Harvard University announced that its endowment plummeted 22 percent in four months from its Jun. 30 value of $36.9 billion. Stanford budget officials have not yet announced the recent activity in Stanford’s endowment, which, at over $17.2 billion as of earlier this year, ranks third in higher education behind Harvard’s and Yale’s.




COMMENTS


Robbing the poor

In fact, almost all American industries, even non-war industries, are making money at the expense of the poor of other nations of the world. America–huge green and greedy, gluttonous, wasteful, selfish. Its dollar, the “greenback,” or the American dollar that is sinking American!

The car industry, a quick bankruptcy is impossible. Chapter 11 would take years to unfold during which time the companies would lose unrecoverable market share. Airlines don’t compare to auto manufacturers with independent suppliers providing credit and some four thousand parts needed every day; just one missing part can prevent assembly of a whole car.
As long as a nation demands more than they need, in other words more than plenty, they demand absolute excess, extravagant luxury.–They have to rob the poor to get it, and to rob the poor to get it they have to wage war.The American people have been making war and making money in their war jobs and their high salaries at the expenses of the poor Iraqi!