Hire me, not Michael Hogan

After Joeseph White resigned in disgrace a few months ago, the University of Illinois is replacing its president with University of Connecticut's Michael Hogan. This is a big enough deal that the NY Times published a profile of Hogan earlier this week.

This is the part of the article I found striking:

On the other, he’ll make a base salary of $620,000, comparable to the pay at Connecticut and a $170,000 increase over his predecessor.

Let me just point out for my readers that are not Illini (Hi, Mom) that the U of I is in the middle of a massive budget crisis. The state government currently has no budget and is hundreds of millions of dollars behind in payments to the University. Faculty and staff have been required to take several unpaid furlough days off this year, for an effective salary cut of about 3% across the board. There have been rumors that the University will not be able to make payroll much longer.

But this guy gets a raise of 40% over his predecessor. When was the last time you got a raise of 40%? (Not to mention the fact that the cost of living difference between Storrs, CT and Urbana means he's already getting a 22% raise just by moving here.)

I'm becoming more and more of the opinion that at this level, people are compensated out of proportion to the benefit they bring an organization, company, or in this case, a university.

I don't know anything about Hogan and don't really even know what the president of a university does. I have a hard time believing, however, that he will be doing a 40% better job, will be doing 40% more work, or will in some way bring 40% more benefit to the university than Stanley Ikenberry (who I also really know nothing about).

That's why UIUC should hire me to be its president rather than Hogan. I hereby agree to do the job for merely the $170,000 raise they are giving Hogan over his predecessor.

I freely admit that I'm not nearly as qualified (or, really, qualified at all) compared to an experienced administrator like Hogan. But I will do the job for a metric fuckton less money.