Americans committed to better living for bosses can take heart at the fact that college and university administrators—unlike their faculty (increasingly reduced to rootless and benefitless adjuncts) and students (saddled with ever more debt)―are thriving.

In 2011, the last year for which figures are available, 42 private college and university presidents received more than a million dollars each for their work.  Robert Zimmer (University of Chicago) was the best-paid, at $3,358,723.  At public colleges and universities, nine top administrators garnered more than $1 million each in 2012-2013, with the best-paid, E. Gordon Gee (Ohio State University), receiving $6,057,615.

Since then, it’s likely that the number of millionaire campus presidents has increased, for their numbers have been growing rapidly.  Indeed, in 2012-13, the number of public university presidents receiving at least $1 million for their services more than doubled over the previous year.

In addition to their formal compensation, college and university presidents receive some very lavish perks.  These include not only free luxury cars and country club memberships, but free elite university housing.  James Milliken, the chancellor of the City University of New York, attended by some of the nation’s most impoverished students, lives rent-free in an $18,000 a month luxury apartment on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side.  From 2000 to 2007, when Gordon Gee was chancellor at Vanderbilt University, he benefited from a $6 million renovation of the university mansion in which he and his wife resided.  According to a New York Times article, after Gee moved on to his multi-million dollar job at Ohio State, he was known for “the lavish lifestyle his job supports, including a rent-free mansion with an elevator, a pool and a tennis court and flights on private jets.”

The soaring incomes of campus administrators are paralleled by their soaring numbers.  Between 1993 and 2009, their numbers reportedly increased by 60 percent, to 230,000―ten times the rate of growth of the faculty.   According to a February 2014 report by the American Institutes for Research, between 1987 and 2012 the number of administrators at private universities doubled, while their numbers in central university system offices rose by a factor of 34.

A look at one university system is instructive.  Between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators at California State University rose 221 percent (from 3,800 to 12,183), compared to an increase in full-time faculty of less than four percent (from 11,614 to 12,019).  CSU thereby achieved the distinction (since then, rapidly fading) of having more administrators than full-time faculty members.

In Canada, where the situation is much the same, faculty members recently teamed up in groups of four to apply for an advertised position as president of the University of Alberta.  They explained that, “by job-sharing this position, we would be able to do a better job than any one person could do―and the salary is certainly ample enough to meet the needs of all four of us.”  A leader of their collective action told a reporter that it was designed to highlight “the disparity between the recent growth of university administration―both in terms of numbers of administrators and in terms of their salaries―and their rhetoric of austerity, which has resulted in program cuts, loss of tenure-track jobs, increasing numbers of poorly-paid, insecure sessionals [adjuncts], and skyrocketing tuition.”

Not surprisingly, the soaring income and numbers of administrators have led to their consuming an increasing share of the campus budget, thereby reducing the percentage spent on teaching and research.

Their rapidly-rising income reflects, in part, the fact that the boards of trustees of most higher educational institutions are dominated by businessmen, who, naturally, are accustomed to the outlandish incomes and perks of the corporate world.  Thus, for example, the board of trustees of New York University had no hesitation in giving university president John Sexton a $1 million loan to help build his lavish vacation home on Fire Island, despite the fact that he was already receiving $1.5 million per year from that university.  When the loan became a source of public controversy, the board chair responded indignantly:  “This is a guy who could readily make $25 million a year” in the private sector!

In addition, as boards of trustees are often less concerned about education than about money, they are dazzled by administrators who rake in large financial contributions.  Against the backdrop of drastically-reduced public funding for universities, attracting donations from the wealthy and their corporations―plus, of course, raising tuition and reducing faculty salaries―is considered particularly desirable behavior in a modern university administrator.  Thus, as a Wall Street Journal article noted, the nation’s top-paid administrator in 2013, Gordon Gee, was “a prolific fundraiser,” who oversaw an Ohio State fundraising campaign that, by the middle of that year, had “raised more than $1.5 billion.”  The priorities were also clear when it came to NYU’s John Sexton.  Although the faculty voted no confidence in him for his autocratic actions, the chair of the board of trustees retorted:  “Since he became president we’ve raised, I think, $4.7 billion in contributions.”  He added:  “We’re convinced there is no one who could be more effective than John, and I speak on behalf of a totally unanimous board.”

The extraordinary growth in the number of administrators can be explained partially by the fact that bureaucrats tend to multiply.  Thus, a top administrator, such as the campus president, likes to have subordinate administrators doing his or her work.  In turn, the subordinates like to have additional administrators working for them.

Another reason for administrative bloat is that, although the number of faculty is strictly regulated by the administration, there is no one regulating the number of administrators except the college or university president.  And the president is unlikely to get rid of administrators―except when he or she wants to appoint new ones.

Thus, whatever the plight of faculty and students, these are boom times for campus administrators.

Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is “What’s Going On at UAardvark?” (Solidarity Press), a satirical novel about campus life.

Students heading off to college for the first time or even to a new campus as a transfer are always full of questions. As an academic adviser at my university, I am happy to answer whatever a student or parent who accompanies their son or daughter might ask.  Most of the questions I have been asked, however, are related to the pathway to graduation and career opportunities thereafter.

While surely these are important areas for consideration, I believe that both students and their parents might benefit from asking a different set of questions that better gets at the real goal of higher education: to transform young people into people who can create a better world. To that end, I offer the following five potential questions that students and/or their parents should ask when they meet with academic advisers, university admissions staff, orientation leaders, or others with whom new students interact in their first few days. I briefly unpack each here, although surely many other extension questions can be appropriate as well.

1.    What is the classroom experience actually like? Will professors work hard to reach learners of all sorts?  This is essential, since we all know that people learn in many different ways. Since most of the education in the U.S (from K-12 through college) privileges verbal learners who can listen and take notes from which they study, this question is particularly important for those who require different teaching modes.

2.    Does advising focus only on coursework and timely graduation? Some might ask, but what else would it emphasize? The answer is: A lot! If faculty members are the advisers, these sessions can be an important one-on-one mentoring session in which career and life tips are shared. Good advisers can help students understand not only how to prepare for their careers but also how to use the skills and knowledge they are obtaining to better their communities.

3.    Are there opportunities for students to interact with faculty and staff outside of the classroom? Students can and should be offered opportunities to engage in campus and community service in which their professors are involved, as well as in research projects. These experiences not only add to students’ knowledge base but they also enhance their confidence and leadership skills.

4.    Is the campus safe?  Colleges and universities are responsible for creating safe educational spaces for students. This includes minimizing the risk that students will be harmed by some of the most common crimes occurring on campuses, like sexual assault and dating violence, but also that classrooms and other environments will be safe for students to express their beliefs and ideas without suffering emotional or physical danger. Is there any written campus civil discourse set of standards? Do professors protect that safe educational environment even when uncomfortable conversations are encouraged (for example, would a student be allowed to use a racial, gender, sexual, religious, or other identity slur)?

5.    Does the college or university celebrate the achievements of ALL students? As a former collegiate athlete, I surely benefitted from the privilege many colleges and universities afford to student-athletes in terms of accolades. But much research has shown that the best educational climates are those in which different skills and knowledges are not only acknowledged but applauded. That means that colleges and universities must be equally excited, and share that excitement, when the Ethics Bowl Team, the Model UN, or other clubs, organizations, or students achieve at high levels.

I believe that advisers should be able to respond to each of the above. If not, it says a lot about the institution.  In sum, students, and the parents or others who support them, deserve an education that will not only teach but transform. It is my hope that perhaps this line of inquiry can help people determine whether a specific college or university is the best place for that to occur.

Laura Finley, Ph.D., teaches in the Barry University Department of Sociology & Criminology and is syndicated by PeaceVoice.

A new report from the Netherlands based on U.S. Air Force firing coordinates shows that our military fired its armor-piercing munitions ¾ made of waste uranium-238 which is called “depleted uranium” or DU ¾ into civilian areas of Iraq and at Iraqi troops during the 2003 invasion and occupation, defying the U.S. Air Force’s own legal advice that the toxic and radioactive ammunition be used only against hardened targets in compliance with the Laws of War.

The study, “Laid to Waste,” by the Dutch organization PAX (http://www.paxvoorvrede.nl/media/files/pax-rapport-iraq-final-lowres-spread.pdf)  found that the lack of legal obligations on U.S.-led militaries in Iraq to help clean-up after using DU weapons has resulted in Iraqi civilians and workers continuing to be exposed to the highly toxic heavy metal years after the war.

The health risks posed by the inadequate management of Iraq’s DU contamination are unclear because neither U.S.-led forces nor the Iraqi government have supported health research into civilian DU exposures.

High-risk groups include people living near or working on dozens of Iraqi scrap metal sites where thousands of military vehicles ¾ destroyed in the 1991 and 2003 bombardments ¾ are stored or processed. Waste sites often lack official oversight and in places it has taken more than 10 years to decontaminate military wreckage from residential neighborhoods. Hundreds of locations that were hit by the weapons, many of which are in populated areas, remain undocumented, and concern among Iraqi civilians over potential health effects from exposure, ingestion and inhalation is widespread.

Report urges release of targeting details to aid clean-up

“To help clean-up we urgently need to know the location and quantities of DU fired,” says the report’s author Wim Zwijnenburg. “The Iraqi government is also in dire need of technical support to help manage the many scrap metal sites where contaminated vehicles are stored,” Zwijnenburg said. The ongoing refusal by the United States to release targeting information continues to hinder the assessment and management of DU in Iraq. The Dutch military contributed a few thousand troops to the Coalition Forces in Iraq, and peacekeepers in Kosovo, and raised alarms over contamination in 2001 and 2006. (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/09/world/1999-us-document-warned-of-depleted-uranium-in-kosovo.html; http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/dutch-military-in-iraq-delays-troop-transfer-from )

A handful of U.S. targeting coordinates held by the Dutch Ministry of Defense, and released after a Freedom of Information Act request, show that U.S. war planes used DU weapons against a far wider range of targets and sites than previously suspected, including Iraqi troops. The U.S. and British governments have long asserted that DU is only for use against armored vehicles. They have often been called “tank busters.”

Radiation exposure guidelines ignored

Depleted Uranium, a by-product of uranium enrichment for reactor fuel and H-bombs, is categorized as an intermediate-level radioactive waste; contaminated rubble and scrap metal are considered low-level radioactive waste. The Dutch study finds that international guidelines for dealing with both kinds of waste ¾ from the International Commission on Radiological Protection (http://www.icrp.org/) ¾ were ignored and that the Iraqi government did not have the technical capacity to safely manage such contamination.

Lack of clean-up obligations

Unlike anti-personnel landmines and other explosive remnants of war, no treaty currently obliges DU users to help clean-up after the war. However, civil radiation protection standards place the responsibility firmly at the foot of the polluters.

Low estimates suggest that at least 440,000 kilograms (488 tons) of DU was fired by the United States in both Gulf Wars in 1991 and 2003. Civilians living near contaminated sites, scrap yard workers, Iraqi doctors, and researchers have repeatedly voiced concerns over the effects of DU on health and the environment.

Hans von Sponeck, a former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told the Guardian last October, “There is definitive evidence of an alarming rise in birth defects, leukemia, cancer, and other carcinogenic diseases in Iraq after the war.” (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/oct/13/world-health-organisation-iraq-war-depleted-uranium)

“In 2001, I saw in Geneva how a World Health Organization mission to conduct on-spot assessments in Basra and southern Iraq, where DU had led to devastating environmental health problems, was aborted under U.S. political pressure,” Sponeck said.

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, edits its quarterly newsletter, and writes for PeaceVoice.