I
watched in utter disbelief as one Las Vegas businessman after another
spoke at the Regents’ Meeting to support Don Snyder’s ascendency to the
UNLV Presidency. Not one of those business
leaders has any idea about the governance of higher education. What a
staged embarrassment of the system’s way of handling its business.
But
that fiasco aside, the Regents had better adopt a new script for
choosing leaders of the System’s eight institutions. The Regents have
proved themselves in this one action to be totally
without the skill and knowledge to govern.
For
a donor looking for a place to put money to improve Nevada’s higher
education system, I recommend the Nevada State College and/or The Black
Mountain Institute. My family is contributing
property valued at $6M to Nevada State College and $10M in cash to the
Black Mountain Institute. We have done so but have created safeguards
with these institutions that will prohibit the Regents from interfering
with these projects.
If
there was ever any doubt about our fear of the Regents’ ability to
govern, this single amateurish action in appointing Don Snyder as UNLV’s
President has confirmed my belief of the Board’s
incompetence.
The latest message from the Board of Regents to academia across this country is “We don’t know what we’re doing”.
This is the problem you see when you have the governing body of an educational system elected rather than appointed. The position of Regent is the first "political" stepping stone to moving up the ladder. The other problem is that NSHE cannot even operate under its own statues. Why do they even have statues in the first place. As soon as they want to do something that is a violation of their own operating statutes, they simply spend a month or two revoking them and changing them to suit their whims or simply suspend them. Maybe the Universities ought to simply suspend the Regents and ignore them. NSHE micromanages too much of the activities of the Universities. They do more harm than good. The Regents should be required to sit and watch the archived video of their meetings. What collective incompetence. Those meetings should be run on reality TV. I put their meetings right up there with Swamp People, Ax Men, and Sister Wives. They are an embarrassment to higher education. It is no wonder the educational system in Nevada languishes behind every that of other states. Their political drama does nothing for the educational system other than keep it at the bottom.
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