Meanwhile, as Strong Hall piously exhorts faculty and staff to tighten their belts and be ever more productive, the ranks of highly paid administrators (and athletics officials) continue to swell. It’s little wonder that KU cannot improve its mediocre position in national rankings (like those of U.S. News & World Report) and that so many members of the university community are dispirited by this administration’s complacent, visionless, “second best is good enough” attitude.

Inevitably, if administrators remain apathetic about the sorry state of faculty, classified and unclassified staff compensation, the university’s national reputation will slip even further, the economic value of a KU degree will suffer, and one of Kansas’ great educational assets will be squandered by the managerial shortsightedness of a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.

Marjorie Swann,

William Tsutsui,

Lawrence