Millionaire College Presidents Grow Along With the Soup Line for Their Graduates. When Will American Students Take a Stand?

Something you won't see in America anytime soon. Students in London protesting a tuition hike from - don't laugh - $9,600 to $14,400 in tuition a year. Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Things aren't going too well for the young people in the UK. Many of them are just like you and me; highly educated, overqualified, and underemployed. One unemployed masters degree student in the UK has resorted to standing on the street like a hobo asking for any type of work.

So I was very proud when I read that our British counterparts weren't just going to sit on their asses and do nothing about skyrocketing tuition rates whilst their nation goes to hell in a handbasket. Why isn't a tuition protest on a scale such as the one in London last week happening in America, land of the free and the home of the brave? Why aren't parents, students, and unemployed graduates storming the universities with pitch forks for raising tuition to pay its presidents more than $1 million each year?

Thousands of students in London are willing to be arrested and scuffle with armed policemen to stop the conservative party there from increasing tuition by a mere $5,264. That is chump change for American students nowadays. Isn't that how much American students spend to eat in the damn cafeteria?

I think we are pass the point of trying to be nice with these people. For those of you who attended one of the 30 colleges who pay their president close or more than $1 million per annum: ask yourself how much of your non-dischargeable student loan debt went to paying these scumbags along with their country club membership. Are you angry yet? You should be:

Thirty presidents received more than $1 million in pay and benefits in 2008, according to an analysis of federal tax forms by The Chronicle of Higher Education. More than 1 in 5 chief executives at the 448 institutions surveyed topped $600,000.

Most of the pay packages were negotiated before the full force of the recession. But even if the numbers dip slightly in next year's survey, executive pay is expected to keep climbing over the long term as colleges compete for top talent. And schools are rewarding executives while raising tuition, exposing themselves to criticism.

At large research universities, the median pay was $760,774; it was $387,923 at liberal arts colleges and $352,257 at undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities.

The highest paid executive in the Chronicle survey was Bernard Lander, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and sociologist who founded Touro College in New York in 1970. He died in February at 94.

Lander received a compensation package of nearly $4.8 million. In a statement, the college said $4.2 million of that was retroactive pay and benefits awarded after an outside consultant determined Lander had been "severely underpaid."

Several deals reported the Chronicle survey, which covers the most recent available data, included deferred compensation or other unusual circumstances. Comparisons to past years aren't possible because of changes in how data is reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Colleges were asked to report salaries by calendar year instead of fiscal year as in the past, so most dollar amounts overlap with what was reported the previous year.

Another change: Perks including first-class air travel, country club dues and housing are now included in reported pay.

In 2007-2008, 23 presidents received more than $1 million. As recently as 2004, no college president had broken the seven-figure threshold.

While some presidents on the latest list lead ultra-selective schools such as Columbia, Yale and Penn, executives from schools such as the University of Tulsa and Chapman University in Orange, Calif., are on it, too.

Not all the most elite schools are represented, either. The presidents of Harvard, Princeton and Johns Hopkins all were paid in the $800,000s.

"Value is in the eyes of the beholder," said Jeffrey Selingo, editor of the Chronicle. "Some boards think these presidents, even at small institutions, are worth it. On the flip side, the prestige of serving at other institutions is enough of a paycheck for some."

Still, numbers in the tax forms don't always tell the whole story.

Chapman University President James Doti's $1.25 million compensation includes two "golden handcuff" deferred compensation deals worth almost $665,000, spokeswoman Mary Platt said. She said the board did not want to lose Doti, who since taking the job in 1991 has raised the school's profile and overseen expansive building projects.

He and other college presidents have donated a portion of the earnings back to the college. Doti gave a $1 million gift for an endowed chair in economics.

I knew America was headed downhill the moment the education system became a for-profit business as with our health care system and everything else that most developed nations cover for their citizens rather than having it privatized to greedy CEOs.

The real revolution against the corporate machine is now in Europe and I hope for the sake of humankind that people in other parts of the world will not allow what is happening in the United States to happen in their country. If this is the way to prevent the education scam from starting in the UK, then by all means these students should do whatever is necessary to stop it from happening. American students and recent unemployed graduates, this is how you get these leeches and swine to listen to your concerns.

Credit: Dominic Lipinski/Press Association, via Associated Press

You Are Not Alone: England Suffers Toooooooooooooooooo!

I've always been under the impression that the mainstream media in  England is a bit less partial than mainstream media in this country.  Especially during the election, and for the years that I followed the war, I would tune into BBC before Fox and CNN.  Actually, BBC was my home page for the longest time.  That being said, it's no surprise that this article was posted in a major English Newspaper--and I haven't seen anything nearly as honest and fact-filled in our papers.  Just as the British Tabloids are the first to expose the nasties on all the stars, I learned all sorts of dirty things about how legal outsourcing works.  I have to admit that I had NO IDEA that England was allowing for outsourcing to India as well.  There is no mention in the article, but I'd like to know when the British equivalent to the ABA agreed that outsourcing was a suitable alternative to hiring attorneys educated in England. I am really sorry that your ABA sold you out, my British readers. I thought ours was the lowest of the law--oops, LOW.  They must be happy to know that they have company down there in the lowest level of Dante's Inferno.

So, let's figure out what we are commiserating about.  In the article, I found out the following:

"...an army of young Indian graduates, most of them from the country’s top law and engineering schools, sits before a barrage of computer terminals. Many are working on legal documents digitally accessed from the servers of blue-chip Western clients via transcontinental fibreoptic cables. Others are engaged in research for upcoming litigation to be fought out in American courtrooms, or are analysing patent filings registered by British companies." [Emphasis added]

Wow.  So, until reading this, I had no idea that Indian lawyers could legally do anything aside from simple document review.  As it turns out, they are ready, willing and able to create legal documents, do legal research and, presumably, writing and patent law??!!!  So, why are doc reviewers the only ones that are up at arms?

I think that patent lawyers, general practitioners and transactional attorneys should join in on the march against legal outsourcing to India.  Will they be installing video telephones in courtrooms so that Indian Attorneys can make court appearances too????  This is the definition of a slippery slope and I can't say that any area of the law is safe any longer.

"Much of the work that Pangea3 and similar firms deal with, such as drafting derivatives contracts or conducting due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, was once the preserve of trainees and associates at big City law firms. Some of those firms racked up annual revenues of more than £1 billion during the boom years, in part by billing out teams of junior lawyers for up to £300 an hour for even the most routine tasks."  [Emphasis added].

As a side note, Pangea is owned by American Companies:
"The company's investors include Sequoia Capital, the same venture capital firm that once backed a little Silicon Valley upstart called Google. (Other big names in the legal process outsourcing -- or LPO industry -- include Clutch Group, CPA Global, Integreon and Mindcrest.)"


Back to the original discussion...

So, these Indian Lawyers aren't messing aound with pedley nonsense.  They are doing due dilligence and drafting derivative contracts??? Really?!!  I am shocked and appalled that Partners in big law firms in England, after years of only wanting the best graduates and training them through patience and mentoring, willingly throw work to Indian Lawyers living half a world away, of whom they know nothing.  That is definitely out of line with the boy's club model of lawyering which has been dominant in both England and the United States for decades.  I pray that they are hit with Angel's death curse... and the Indians screw up something extremely important and cost each big law firm millions more than British/American counsel would have cost.  From my fingertips, to God's ears!

"... in a drive to cut costs, are beginning to send that sort of work to cheaper jurisdictions, such as India, South Africa and the Philippines."

Once again, my jaw dropped to find out that South Africa and the Phillippines were also vying for outsourcing work???  How did we miss this????  We were so distracted by Indian Outsourcing Companies and Nigerian Lawyers who are notorious for seizing document review jobs, despite their lack of an American Legal Education--that we didn't even realize that there are a couple of other countries that are prepared to take what little work we have off of our hands!

"That sort of cost-saving has proved compelling in the wake of the economic downturn and is causing demand for Indian outsourcing providers to soar. Studies suggest that there are as many as 10,000 lawyers in the country working for outsourcing providers, and total revenues in the sector are expected to double this year to $1 billion (£613 million) and rise to $4 billion within five years." [Emphasis added].

Isn't it ironic that they have 10,000 gainfully employed attorneys in India, considering that nearly 2,000 lawyers were laid off from just the top 10 law firms in the country. The rest of the industry probably lost at least 8,000 jobs.  We just packed all of those jobs up and shipped them to India where 10,000 Indian Lawyers are prepared to do what we have done for hundreds years, for a fraction of the price and cost it takes to practice the law.

"The commercial legal market was badly shaken by the downturn and many senior partners expect that the double-digit growth of the boom years will not return for some time. Instead, the sector is reshaping itself. Some top firms believe that they will have to be leaner to retain profitability, with fewer associates for every partner. They plan to focus exclusively on high-end work for which clients will continue to pay top rates, while less valuable work will be farmed out."

I'll go ahead and say the obvious; if law firms reshape themselves into a top-heavy model where the work is farmed abroad and the partners focus on "high-end" work and rain-making, the quality will suffer.  There is very little supervision in Bangalore.  Senior associates are no longer valued, along with new grads--and they are the real workhorses of any law firm.  So, once again, the law firm model may implode because of the revamping in this economy.  Between outsourcing, laying off senior associates and charging flat fees, the PPP is sure to drop to the single digits.

So, thanks to ABA Un-Ethics Opinion 08-451, American Lawyers are suffering from the consequences of outsourcing.  It's good to know that England is too.  Not because I want the legal profession to fall apart in two countries, rather than one... but it's nice to know that you are not alone.