Neal Smatresk: The UNLV president fights back over budget cuts – VEGAS INC

I believe this fellow will be the next president at the University of North Texas in Denton.

The general belief by many people in our state — and it’s kind of a national belief — is that `those higher ed people they’re kind of fat and well paid and don’t work very hard.’

We’ve kind of become public employees and public employees are now the enemy. We’re treated like the enemy. If people in private industry made two or three times what we make they viewed us as kind of their slow and dim-witted counterparts because we weren’t earning money with them in an entrepreneurial way.

Now we’ve gone through this winnowing in industry here. Thousands of people have lost their jobs. Their pay structures have been changed radically. That’s the challenge of working in the private sector. The glory years are over and there’s a lot of resentment of public employees who chose this slow and steady path.

It’s like the tortoise and the hare and they’re trying to kill the tortoise.

Part of what you see in our state is resentment of public employees in general. It’s almost `The private sector has felt the pain, you should feel it too.’ Without enough thought that universities are the buffer. We’re countercyclical, so in the recession people come back to re-tool so they can engage in a new economy.

http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/apr/04/president-fights-back/

Posted by KWB wandering among the borderlands of the Ether.