SIAP: Gordon Gee spends $800,000 just to travel.
I didnt see this posted yet but thought some would enjoy this article. The Dayton Daily really did a great job with this and it's nice to see others in the state of Ohio starting to ask some questions about that school. It's also nice to se what the Brown University students think o Gee.
http://m.daytondailynews.com/dayton/pm_20554/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=9XZeYgoM
Chinese universities looking into methods of adminisering a free tattoo program
now force choking slow internet
When you wear a fucking bowtie every day, you have to travel to exotic lands to find any decent variety.
Except if you're a G and just make your own like Dhani.
I think you mean "except if you're a G (not that Gee)"
NTG?
Interesting article. It's clear that when he travels on commercials airlines, it's all in paid first class. Given those expenses, I wouldn't be surprised if he's also traveling paid international F. To give those who don't do much travel a sense of context, I took a few trips to Europe last year in paid business class at around $4500 a pop, and a trip in paid business to Seoul a couple years back for about $6500. Paid F is easily double, sometimes triple, that. I've seen paid F fares easily in the $10k-15k range per ticket. I do know a few people who probably rack up about $100k-150k/year in airfare, but these are also people who fly over 200k miles per year with a ton of international travel, and spend probably 80-100 nights on the road. Gee is nowhere near that, from what the reports state.
He flies business class international, but takes private jets when convenient.
release a little bit of info, figure out the angle of the story coming at them. Then provide "the rest of the information" to cover themselves.
Been there done that. God what a corrupt place.
That's what I was thinking. They aren't busy fulfilling their backlog of public records requests, they are busy trying to figure out how to hide their records. They are probably scrambling to find an unrestricted endowment fund loophole to hide behind like FERPA for their student-athletes. I work for the government and I'm sure this happens to some degree at all levels of a bureaucracy. It's the arrogance, lack of accountability, and lack of follow through on internal reviews that offends me. It's ironic that I'm typing this while I'm supposed to be working. Talk about government waste!
The in-state media does not question that university, instead focusing on its reps' spin of the latest controversy to leak out. The public is only too willing to follow along in between the extensive crime coverage and random financial/personal/professional advice segments (TV), or toothless investigative reporting with a precious Sports section (print).
"Internal auditors found that 11 of 30 sampled American Express card transactions weren’t supported with properly documented business justifications and six of the 30 lacked itemized receipts."
What grates me about this is that I have have a corporate Visa with a spending limit, and while providing sufficient documentation of judicious use should not be a shocking policy, the alternative for me - should they find my reason insufficient - is that I either pay for the expense myself somehow or I get canned. If you cannot meet record retention requirements on a third of your documented expenses, there is something either deeply wrong with your organizational skills or how you handle your employer's money. Worse, he's the university president, so if he is not being responsible with documenting the money, does he honestly expect that others will feel obligated to make responsible choices? This is not leadership of the constructive variety.
Gee seems like a perfect fit for Ohio: pompous, unaccountable, revered for results no matter the cost even when others can achieve similar or better results at a far lower cost.
And instead of getting angry or pushing for change, the Buckeyes defend and praise him. Oh well. It has to really suck to be a Buckeye.
"At Ohio State Gee, 68, oversees an enterprise with a $5 billion budget, 65,000 students and 48,000 employees. Although the university has many funding sources, state taxpayers contributed more than $421 million to Ohio State during the 2011 fiscal year.
Gee is well compensated. Last year, Ohio State paid him $2 million in base salary, bonuses, deferred compensation and supplemental retirement, though Gee donated his $296,786 bonus back to the university.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Gee is the highest paid president of a public university in the United States.
But Gee makes money elsewhere too. According to Forbes.com, Gee received $2.2 million between 2006 and 2010 in director fees, stock awards and stock options for serving on the boards of Bob Evans Farms Inc., Massey Energy Co., Hasbro Inc., Limited Brands Inc. and Gaylord Entertainment.
In 2011, Gee served as a director, trustee or member for 30 corporations and nonprofit organizations, according to his financial disclosure statement. As a director of the Columbus-based Bob Evans last year, he made $158,300, plus $24,205 in stock gains and dividends. And Grange Mutual Casualty, also in Columbus, paid him $114,000 in director fees last year."
How do these fat cats get on so many boards and have all of these companies throwing money at them?? How/ does this work, anyone know? Gee obviously does.
There is no way that a 68 year old man, or any man for that matter...could do the amount of work for each of these companies to justify getting paid. How many hours in a week does this guy have? What benefits do these companies get by having him on the board and doing work for them as "director"?
Gee has obviously not gotten into this position without something going for him other than the snippets of him putting his foot in his mouth. If you want to know how those associations work, you simply are not in the right financial socio-economic group.
Look across many of the F500 boards of directors and you will find how many CEOs make their fortunes...sitting on multiple boards allows for friends to set the compensation packages, golden parachutes, bonuses, etc for the other members and boards.
What I like as one of the best portions of the story are the notations that at each of his previous stops the presidential homes required at least two to six million dollars in renovations. $10M in home renovations were required at the last three stops seems like another nice benefit of being the leader of an educational institution.
I searched for Gee on this, but he is not listed. Out of those companies listed above, only Limited Brands has their board of directors listed, and he is not among them.
to be fair, the article does state he served on those boards between 2006 and 2010. Seems he's no longer on those boards of directors.
Being a University President is obviously a part-time job... ask Mary Sue.
http://people.forbes.com/profile/mary-sue-coleman/46492
Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house... at least about some things. Or just throw them carefully.
And we wonder why tuitions increase at a ridiculous rate every year... it's called "bureaucracy". Having worked on the periphery of a university system, I am still amazed what sometimes constitutes a job/career in the sector, it sometimes seems as if there is absolutely no oversight whatsoever. At least there is no motivation to reduce spending.
I've done some consulting in the higher ed industry and it's really amazing what you find. Their internal operations (back office, for example) are often extremely antiquated. Also, in many cases, the supporting the faculty basically creates an entirely separate and redundant administrative organization. For example, most faculty compensation, benefits, and employee relations support are often completely separate from that of other university staff, and they tend to have a ton of leverage when it comes to negotiating pay.
I also knew one University president who basically considered himself literally the most important person on campus. A lot of these guys have huge egos and justify their big spending through the donations they get from schmoozing with well-heeled alumni, corporations, foundations, and other donors.
~10,000 are at the medical center (nurses, aides, doctors, etc) and another 10K are student workers, IIRC.
A directorship takes about 10 days a year, which includes time for preparation and meetings, in exchange for a low 6-digit salary. It can take more time, though, if your CEO does something so stupid that you have to step in and actually do something.
HOWEVA - the role of being a director is not as sweet as it used to be. All of the lawsuits against the banks in the past 3 years also included suits against all of the directors since they were the ultimate decision-makers. There is specific D&O insurance policies that cover the directors and officers but they still get sued all the time. Its still probably worth the money to serve but I wouldn't want the frustration and liability if I was already making a nice living like Gee and Mary Sue.
Why do you think executive pay is so fucking high in the United States? All of the executive boards form one giant, incestuous network of rich people who continue to make decisions to pay each other (and themselves) more money. It's a beautiful system.
He has to make sure he has a little something set aside, in case the football coach decides to fire him!
Have you been to this dump? you'd want out yourself
This is sensationalist "journalism." For all his faults when a microphone gets put in front of his face, Gee is generally regarded as one of the best university presidents out there and brings in many times his cost in benefit for the school. OSU wants him fresh and productive when he hits the ground, so why not spring for the corporate jet or first-class tickets when he's trying to pry money away from potential donors. Mary Sue Coleman probably should be flying first-class too, not the other way around.
What on Earth are you basing your claims on? I'd be intereted to see a source, but I'll bet a dollar you just pulled that straight out of your ass.
Also, I threw up in my mouth a little with "fresh and productive." Congratulations on your generally boot-licking post.
I don't think the problem is whether or not he's worth the money they spend on him. It's the standard Ohio way they go about things as illustrated in the story. They drag their feet providing the information, provide incomplete information, admit they don't follow through on their own internal reviews, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars without having to be accountable for where it goes. It's the same attitude around my work (city government). Employees drive around in circles all day doing nothing, surf the net (not me of course), go buy personal items or run errands on city time etc. etc. Nobody does anything about it because the supervisors are doing it too. The lack of accountability is what gets under my skin.
too bad he wasn't available to comment on the story. im sure that would have been entertaining...
1. Gee spent about a year at Brown, was told he did not fit in, and was asked to leave.
2. while Gee is on the board that supposedly oversees the head of the Limited (Les Wexner) Wexner is on the OSU board that oversees Gee. ,Does anyone else here see a conflict of interest?
3. Wexner, who apparently wields enormous power, has a very interesting history. I will not give into the temptation to link the most provocative biographical material from the web, so as not to spread rumors of uncertain veracity. However, based on my admittedly fuzzy understanding, I do now seriously question wheher getting rid of the most visible but less powerful actors in the recent OSU scandals---like Tressel or Smith or even Gee--would really get to the heart of the problems.
It's "voractiy" here.
if it's unverified.
2. Such conflicts of interest are the norm, in fact they're the very heart of the American system of corporate governance. Pick a corporation at random and look for these reciprocal arrangements and you'll realize how common they are.
3. I agree about Wexner. If you'll recall, when Gee was hired he was fresh off a total (and not entirely popular) overhaul of the athletic department at Vanderbilt, where he essentially discarded the position of AD and made athletics subordinate to the office of Student Life. I think when Gee got the job at Ohio he was told that there would be no such funny business there and the athletic department was not his concern. He had no real control over Smith or Tressel and I think he made that clear with his "joke" at the Tressel presser.
I thought it was revealing in this regard that after the fire was out and things started to calm down post-Tressel we started hearing rumors about a possible restructuring of the Ohio AD along lines that sounded a lot like what was done at Vandy. I think the risks of having the AD and football coach going over the President's head straight to the board of trustees (or, more probably, straight to Wexner) had become clear and the people in the Ohio administration that had never liked it were starting to agitate.
I don't think Gee's nearly as stupid as most here seem to believe. I think he's been in a very awkward position at OSU with regard to athletics; his awkwardness is probably genuine but it's also convenient and lets him communicate things he can't actually say.
Firing Smith won't solve anything; firing Gee certainly wouldn't solve anything. At best, firing Smith could be a sign of a welcome change in the power relationships at the university and within its board; at worst it would just be cosmetic and they'd bring in somebody else for business-as-usual.
may, as you insightfully point out, have many similar conflicts of interest on the boards--ie where one executive rules another at one place but is ruled by the same person somewhere else. I did not realize this. However, your insight may point to a central problem at Ohio. That is, Ohio is not a private corporation. It is a public institution that gets money from the state and federal government. As the public, we are paying for the shenanigans that go on at Ohio. We are, at least indirectly supporting not only Gee's profligate spending but also an army of public relations people and and lawyers, who try to cover up University misdeeds (by allowing the U to spend its endowment more freely on the excesses rather than on the now government-funded activities more central to the educational mission).
So, my question is this: How commonly do board conflicts of interest exist between universities and corporations? (can you name any?) Are there no university, state or federal rules prohibiting such conflicts? If not, it is easy to see how we end up with schools, like Ohio, being run like vast corporations with loose morals and little thought to public accountability.
I don't have much time to put in on this today, but the first bio I opened for an OSU trustee was for Alex Shumate, an attorney who chaired the last two presidential search committees at the school. "Mr. Shumate serves as a director of the J.M. Smucker Company and Cincinnati Bell, Inc. He is president of The Limited Brands Foundation Board...."
The chariman at Smucker is also an OSU trustee, and you're already familiar with Wexner and Limited.
It's one big interlocking board. And I'm sure it's all justified, at least in the eyes of those participating, by the considerable donations made to the university by the corporations on whose boards Gee serves. I'd bet that's true of the corporations where MSC's sitting on the board, too, if anyone wants to check. (Their CEOs aren't regents at Michigan because they'd have to stand for election; if regents were appointed it might well be a different story.)
Pick another school with appointed trustees and I'm sure you'll find the same, especially if the president is a career administrator and not primarily an academic. If you ever read the epic thread at TigerDroppings you know this was true, in spades, at Auburn.
MSC does serve on the board of internet2, an advanced networking consortium led by the U.S. research and education community. But that is a far cry from Gee serving on the board of a clothing maker who (effectively) is his boss on the board of trustees of OSU. How much state or federal funded time does Gee spend helping Wexner to sell see-through panties at VIctoria's Secret? So, my concern stands. What we need are more transparent (see-through) relationships at federal and state funded instiutions.
She's on the board at Johnson & Johnson and at Meredith Corporation, where I'm guessing she spends the same amount of time helping them sell Ladies Home Journal that Gee spends helping Limited sell lingerie.
I don't know if there are others; those were the two listed at the forbes J&J link posted above.
This is not unusual and for fund-raising/networking purposes probably unavoidable. It's true that the chairs of those companies aren't regents at Michigan, but regents in Michigan are elected not appointed.
MSC's bosses on the board of regents do not have the power to tell her to spend state or federal-funded time at the U to help sell their companies' push-up bras.
did the article get taken down?
Here's a functioning link. People should read it before commenting--some of the above commenters clearly haven't.
I used to work for OSU in part of their IT department. There as PLENTY of waste, so this is no surprise to me.
Example? New higher-up gets hired, we would purchase a $1700 MacBook Pro, a $1000 Cinema Display, and a Parallels key so that they could run Windows 24/7.
All of this were paid at retail prices from the independent book store.
When he gets fired, he can get a job at the GSA.
Urban is reviewing the matter and will make a decision on Gee's status shortly.
"Gee is known nationally for his extensive bow tie collection, boundless energy, occasional verbal gaffes, and fundraising magic."
A bow tie collection? WTF?! The man sounds like a world class douche bag.