✔Fact Checker will address the issue of bonuses paid to administrators first.
Mr Brodhead spins that the bonuses are not that at all, but "at risk" payments that won't be paid in bad years, and will be paid in good years. Sure sounds like a bonus to me.
Dick, please be advised that before this issue became incendiary and thus highly embarrassing for you, Duke University itself referred to these payments at "bonuses and incentive payments." Those precise words appear in the IRS Form 990's that were the sole source for all the numbers in the Herald-Sun.
Spin away, Mr. President, but you are stuck with the words that your fellow administrators used to classify all of these payments.
✔Now your second point is the numbers in the Herald Sun were misleading because bonuses earned in the 2007-08 year, which was before the financial meltdown, were not paid until 2008-09 when the meltdown was underway.
Wrong again, Dick, for the statistics in the Herald Sun revealed only how much money top administrators actually lugged away during the academic year 2008-09 year, making no further representations. Dick, you will recall that year, for you laid off people and froze the salaries of others.
✔In the final analysis, $2 million is $2 million for the Chancellor -- no matter how it accumulates -- and that's an obscene amount of money for someone who decides to work at a "non-profit" institution. That's the point of the Herald-Sun article.
Not to mention that the Chancellor is allowed to take enough time off to make another $1 million every year by serving on four time-consuming corporate boards.
In the final analysis, here's what is "at risk." Someone working in the Duke investment office, DUMAC, who lugs home a bonus twice the size of his regular salary is "at risk" of being called on the carpet by stakeholders in the University. The President is "at risk" of having to duck their anger.
So here's the challenge for you Mr. President. You have all the figures for the 2009-10 academic year. They have been audited. Release them now, instead of getting an extension of the time to file the form 990 as Duke usually does. Fact Checker would like to see the "bonus" "at risk" figures for the first year of the financial meltdown, combined with the base salaries of the second year.
Loyal Readers, does anyone want to bet whether FC hears from Brodhead???
✔As for the Academic Council discussion of the budgetary process, we are given nothing but obfuscation. Yes, the deans of the various schools determine how their budgets will be spent. But the central administration determines what those budgets will be by allocating university-wide resources.
Peter the Provost understated the budget crisis at the Fuqua School. Yes it is highly dependent on tuition. And their highly touted, signature Cross-Continent MBA has attracted only half the students the Dean "promised." That's 140 people who are not paying the tuition of $120,100 (yes $120,100).
Moreover, Fuqua's corporate education business has fallen off the cliff.
Mr. Provost, I invite you to share with us the actual numbers about Fuqua. What reason can there be that stakeholders cannot have this information?
✔The Chronicle says Mr Brodhead informed the faculty the Trustees discussed "the endowment, undergraduate admissions and global strategy, among other issues."
There is no detail on any of this. Does this newspaper suppose its readers are entitled to some hint of precisely what was said about items on that list?
