(Please excuse some typos and errors today. I'm using Steve's ancient computer to blog and, well, it's ancient.)

The New York Times continues to write about student loan debt. Finally. In today's article, we get a close look at E. Gordon Gee, the president of OSU.

E. Gordon makes a good penny.

Mr. Gee’s compensation package this year, moreover, is worth about $2 million, and The Chronicle of Higher Education has called him the highest-paid public university president. The Dayton Daily News recently reported that Mr. Gee had billed Ohio State for $550,000 in travel in the last two years.

He recognizes that tuition is at a tipping point and that student loan debt is out of hand. While he's not proposing a pay cut for himself or cutting back on his travel, he did improve the purchasing system for the school. He's also not cutting back on dorm or gym facilities, but he is cutting back on sabbatical time.

I think we need a serious discussion about what makes an essential college education. The basics. Colleges need to justify their expenses to outsiders, including administrative pay.

UPDATE: Andrew Hacker's opinion article in Today's Room for Debate is a must read. Hacker is a professor at Queens College, who has always taken a strong stance against graduate education. He refused to teach at CUNY-Graduate Center.

More colleges now give their faculties expensive sabbaticals every third year. A recent count found that 20 of Harvard’s 48 history professors weren’t teaching. Nor can it be shown that research enhances classroom instruction; often the reverse is the case.

Nationwide, full professors average a not-humble $113,176. Faculty pay at Stanford has close to doubled in actual dollars in the last three decades. The president of 1,991-student Carleton College gets $593,132. I don’t doubt he has weighty duties; but the head of the Food and Drug Administration makes about a third as much.

Nationwide, full professors average a not-humble $113,176. Faculty pay at Stanford has close to doubled in actual dollars in the last three decades. The president of 1,991-student Carleton College gets $593,132. I don’t doubt he has weighty duties; but the head of the Food and Drug Administration makes about a third as much. Even while indenturing their futures with loans, students find they are increasingly taught by underpaid adjuncts, and in huge lectures where they peer at a professor from the 26th row. At another time, I’ll fault state legislators for starving public colleges. For the present, I’d say that the prodigal ways of faculties and administrators could use a closer look.

Also, read Lawyers, Guns, and Money.