Education is one of several core priorities for the Michigan 2018 budget that Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has put together, according to Anna Heaton, the governor’s press secretary, in a Medium.com post. If you look at the actual numbers of the proposed budget, you might not arrive at quite the same conclusion.
The Michigan.gov page for the budget has a spiffy chart that proclaims state funding to universities has continually increased since 2012! Don’t be fooled by that, look at the full budget proposal PDF (192 pages, 3.35 megabytes).
The increase of 2.5% overall (see page 52 of the PDF) doesn’t seem like higher education is a core priority. It looks more like staying just a little bit ahead of inflation.
Wayne State University (WSU) is getting an increase of just 2%, to $196,064,500. That might sound like a lot of money, but when you figure in all the faculty and support staff, and materials and other expenses that a major research university has to take care of, it becomes clear that some people at WSU are going to have to make sacrifices.
Management is not going to make any sacrifices, though. Students are probably going to get hit with another tuition hike next year, but people like WSU President Roy M. Wilson and College of Engineering Dean Farshad Fotouhi will probably expect their paychecks to increase regardless.
The elected WSU Board of Governors met in secret last year to vote to increase Wilson’s salary to $522,000. After Steve Neavling of the Motor City Muckraker uncovered this, the board held a public vote with the outcome being the same. Board member Dana Thompson (D) was the lone voice of reason.
And this was after Neavling uncovered a “donation” from Mike Ilitch with a lot of strings attached. So many strings, in fact, that Ilitch could theoretically reduce his donation to the point of sticking the taxpayer with the whole bill for building the Mike Ilitch School of Business.
That was a terrible deal. Maybe you give a pass to Ilitch for being a greedy billionaire (plus he’s dead now), but how do you give Wilson a pass for not watching out for the Michigan taxpayer? If Wilson was evaluated like the average working man, he would certainly not be getting a raise for this dismal performance.
Fotouhi has also been getting raises, and now he gets paid more than many WSU deans who run their colleges with integrity and without scandal. After a 5-year review conducted last year managed to overlook Fotouhi’s many failings, his contract was renewed to the tune of $300,087.
What sorts of things did the 5-year review fail to take into account? In brief: Fotouhi tried to fire Prof. Greg Auner’s staff by e-mail, but when they ignored that, he had the locks to the labs changed, putting the entire building, maybe the entire campus, at risk of a silane gas explosion (read Crain’s Detroit Business).
Fotouhi ignored budget requests for teaching assistants and classroom software license renewals, had copper cabling installed without letting the building manager know, caused the resignation of Prof. James Woodyard and assaulted a female honor student with a pie to her face.
That's just a fraction of things I know about. Fotouhi has almost certainly done bad things I don’t know about or even suspect. Though there is plenty to suspect, though, such as the extent of his involvement with his brother at Pall Corporation in the lack of transparency in the Ann Arbor dioxane cleanup (Kai Petainen at Forbes has raised concerns).
Or whether Fotouhi's deficient leadership style had anything to do with the sudden departure of Prof. Joseph Hummer last year (Hummer was chair of Civil Engineering, and the position has reverted to Prof. Carol Miller, who is probably just as unwilling to be a yes-man today as she was five years ago).
Wilson has got to be aware of Fotouhi’s terrible performance. For one thing, in his first few months as president, Wilson removed Auner from Fotouhi’s hierarchy and put Auner (and his staff) in the School of Medicine. Technically, this is only on paper, but it's hardly a vote of confidence in Fotouhi’s leadership.
Which reminds me: in December 2012, as Fotouhi was shopping around for a contractor to make his office physically larger and more luxurious (Purchase Order PO616416), the Department of Electrical Engineering was voting no confidence in Fotouhi’s leadership.
And for anyone skeptical of the silane gas incident, anyone who points out that former Provost Margaret Winters denied it ever happened, ask whether Fotouhi himself has denied it. When Tom Henderson of Crain's asked Fotouhi about it, Fotouhi just said “no comment.”
Almost everywhere Fotouhi goes, he walks around with a lawyer whispering things in his ear. One of those things probably is: “If it's bad and it’s true, don’t admit it, but don’t deny it either.” That way, Fotouhi is technically not lying.
As for Winters, she's gone, as is Ron Brown, the original provost who saddled the College of Engineering with the Fotouhi problem. Keith Whitfield, the new provost, seems unwilling or unable to correct the Fotouhi problem.
As the College of Engineering suffers under Fotouhi, some have pinned their hopes on the accreditation visit from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), which begins today. Banners and posters throughout the WSU campus urge faculty and staff to “know the mission, live the mission, be prepared.”
Maybe the HLC will just go through the motions and renew WSU’s accreditation. Or maybe, just maybe, the HLC will ask whether Wilson and Fotouhi are living the mission as they accept raises and increase enrollments but do nothing to increase graduations.