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From The Economist:

It’s Nottingham, but not as we know it
Nov 10th 2005 | NINGBO

Foreign universities arrive in China

“THE fundamental aim of schools is to train builders of and successors to the socialist cause” is a slogan often used by officials in China. So why allow a leading British university, with no interest in training good Communists, to set up and run a campus in the port city of Ningbo? In its struggle to build its own world-class universities, and stem an exodus of students to universities abroad, China is relaxing its ideological guard. A little.

The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, is the first foreign-run university campus in China since the Communist take-over in 1949. It is a bold venture both for the Chinese officials who approved it as well as for Nottingham University, which is trying to embed itself in a system that is usually highly intolerant of western liberal values. “I can’t deny there are risks,” says Ian Gow, provost of the Ningbo campus.

For all China’s reservations about ceding control to foreigners, there has been no attempt to disguise the foreignness of the 39-hectare (96-acre) site. In less than 18 months, what had been an expanse of paddy fields was turned into a pleasant vista of lawns, trees, artificial waterways (“Nottingham Lake” and “Nottingham River”) and modern buildings. A shopping “High Street” and an administrative centre with a replica of the clock tower at the university in Nottingham (though with computer-generated chimes) complete the British feel. Classes are all in English.

The 550m yuan ($68m) facility was built by Nottingham’s partner in the project, Zhejiang Wanli Education Group, a privately run but government-owned company based in Ningbo, one of the largest cities in Zhejiang province. It owns the assets and controls the governing board, but lets Nottingham recruit students and faculty, decide on courses and select their content, conduct examinations and confer University of Nottingham degrees. Even though subjects touch on potentially sensitive issues such as the media and international relations, Mr Gow says there has been no attempt to interfere in Nottingham’s academic freedom.

Despite all the obvious benefits, an education ministry source in Beijing says the authorities remain cautious. “China is a socialist country. We require education in philosophy, politics and economics that is Marxist-Leninist,” he says. The Nottingham experience “will not be duplicated widely.” China is likely to wait to see how Ningbo, and a joint-venture university being set up in Suzhou, another city in the Yangtze delta, by Britain’s University of Liverpool, develop before deciding whether to allow any others to follow suit.

A potentially tricky period passed without obvious trouble last week when the Ningbo campus conducted its first student elections. Elections to student bodies in China are normally tightly controlled by the Communist Party through its front, the Communist Youth League, to which most students belong. But at Nottingham Ningbo, students say, not only the student representatives were chosen democratically, but also leaders of the League itself.

The biggest vote-winner in the union ballot was a British graduate student, Mark Curry, probably the first foreigner to become a union president in China since Communist rule began. Some 50% of the campus’s 900-odd students (the plan is to have some 4,000, mostly undergraduates, by 2008) cast their ballots in an election conducted “much more enthusiastically” than similar ones often are in Britain, says Mr Curry, a veteran of student union affairs in his home country.

The party, it appears, has decided to adopt a low profile in order to avoid embarrassing Nottingham. The campus has a Communist Party secretary—normally a crucial executive post in Chinese universities—but the incumbent is an absentee whose main work is in the city’s education bureau. Ideological education—called “civics”—is limited to the year-long foundation course which Chinese undergraduates at Nottingham Ningbo undergo before starting their degree proper. It is conducted by Wanli staff.

If the project succeeds, it could be a boon for Nottingham, which wants to become a leading centre of Chinese studies in Britain and enhance its profile in a globalising educational market (though the Ningbo campus is a not-for-profit organisation). It would also be an asset for China’s fast-growing middle classes. Fees at Nottingham Ningbo (50,000 yuan a year, or $6,165) may be ten times higher than at other universities in China, but that is still a third of what they would be for a Chinese student in Britain. In China, which rates poorly in international higher-education league tables, a western university degree has considerable allure, even if it is earned in Ningbo.

Inside Higher Ed: Faculty members at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus voted at an emergency meeting Tuesday to urge trustees to conduct a midterm review of President Adam Herbert, the Indianapolis Star reported. Herbert’s leadership has been questioned on a number of fronts, notably because the Bloomington campus is in its third year without a permanent chancellor.

The Chronicle of Higher Education : Faculty members on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus held an unusual emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss their frustrations with Adam W. Herbert Jr., the institution’s president, and to voice a lack of confidence in his leadership.

At the meeting, members of the Bloomington Faculty Council voted in favor of a resolution that urges the university’s trustees to conduct a midterm review of Mr. Herbert’s performance. Mr. Herbert, who took over as president in August 2003, is about halfway through his five-year contract at the university.

The New York Times: College Leaders’ Earnings Top $1 Million

Donald E. Ross turned Lynn University, once a nearly bankrupt two-year Catholic school for women in Boca Raton, Fla., into a thriving four-year liberal arts college. Now, as Mr. Ross nears retirement after 34 years as president, it is apparent how much the board of trustees appreciates his work.

Mr. Ross ranked first in total compensation among the nation’s private university presidents for the 2003-4 academic year with a package worth $5,042,315, according to the latest annual survey of executive compensation by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Data from 2003-4 is the most recent available for private institutions. The results are to be released publicly on Monday.

The Detroit News: Five college presidents pocket more than $1 million

Curious where those extra tuition dollars are going? One place to look would be the pockets of college presidents.

Five presidents have cracked the $1 million compensation barrier, according to an annual survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education to be released today, and more are sure to follow. Nine earned more than $900,000 — a figure none broke in last year’s report.

All were at private universities, and the figures are for fiscal 2004, the most recent information available for private schools. More recent data on public universities, for the current academic year, shows salaries are rising there, too. Leaders of 23 public institutions are being paid $500,000 or more this year, up from 17 a year ago.

Donald Ross of Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., topped the list at $5.04 million. However, all but $477,000 of that was deferred compensation awarded after 34 years as president. He was followed by Audrey K. Doberstein of Wilmington College in Delaware ($1.37 million) and Gordon Gee of Vanderbilt ($1.33 million).

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Penn State’s Long-Held Secret: the President’s Salary

Unlike other public-college presidents, Graham B. Spanier, president of the Pennsylvania State University system has long been able to keep his salary a secret.

As a “state related” institution, supported partly by public funds, Penn State has refused to release Mr. Spanier’s compensation. Twice, however, it was made public — in 1995, when Mr. Spanier was hired, and in 1999, when it was included on an Internal Revenue Service form by a foundation associated with the university.

Now, for the first time, Penn State officials have released the information to The Chronicle for the annual executive-compensation survey.

Mr. Spanier will be paid $492,000 by the university in 2005-6. In addition, he lives in a university-owned home and drives a car provided by the institution. Mr. Spanier’s total compensation ranks 25th among presidents of 139 public universities surveyed by The Chronicle, and fifth among presidents of the 11 members of the Big Ten Conference. Presidents of the University of Michigan system, the Ohio State University system, the University of Illinois system, and Northwestern University all make more than Mr. Spanier.

San Francisco Chronicle: UC piling extra cash on top of pay; 8,500 top staffers pulling down at least $20,000 each in bonuses, compensation

When the University of California hired David Kessler as dean of the UCSF School of Medicine two years ago, the university announced he would receive “total compensation” of $540,000 a year.

Turns out he actually got much more.

In addition to his salary, he received a one-time relocation allowance of $125,000, plus $30,000 for six months’ rent and a low-interest home loan.

There was more. He was reimbursed for his actual moving costs from Connecticut, and his family received round-trip airline tickets to go house-hunting in the Bay Area.

Kessler is hardly unique. Despite UC’s complaints that it has been squeezed by cuts in state funding and forced to raise student fees, many university faculty members and administrators get paid far more than is publicly reported.

In addition to salaries and overtime, payroll records obtained by The Chronicle show that employees received a total of $871 million in bonuses, administrative stipends, relocation packages and other forms of cash compensation last fiscal year. That was more than enough to cover the 79 percent hike in student fees that UC has imposed over the past few years.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: NYU Professors Blast Inclusion of Administrators on Course-Management Sites

Faculty members at New York University are accusing administrators of surreptitiously listing deans and directors of undergraduate studies as instructors on course-management sites, allowing those administrators to monitor course discussions and other activity.

Although the administrators’ names were quickly removed after they were discovered, the incident has exacerbated an already fractious environment at the university, where a strike by graduate students has divided professors and administrators. Many faculty members who support the graduate students have refused to cross picket lines and are holding classes off the campus. Some of them accuse administrators of infiltrating the course-management sites specifically to monitor strike-related discussions.