For the past two weeks, rumors have been spread that the position of president of Texas A&M University and chancellor of the Texas A&M University system might soon be merged by the Board of Regents.
President Murano commented on the situation in an e-mail sent last week. Mike McKinney, who oversees the functioning of the 11 universities in the A&M system, has not addressed the students of the system's flagship University.
The reasoning behind the purported move is "realizing cost efficiencies," as Murano put it. If this is the justification that has been given to her by the Board of Regents, the students, faculty and staff of this University are in line to suffer a great disservice. President Murano's salary of $450,000 is but a trickle in the bucket of A&M's $1.2 billion budget.
Accepting the notion that that much money could not be saved by cutting costs elsewhere and that eliminating the position of chief executive officer is supposed to increase efficiency surpasses even our capacity for rationalization. If the goal of a merger of capacities is saving money, we suggest the Board of Regents investigate various superfluous managerial positions lower in the University's hierarchy.
What is more likely is the desire of the Board of Regents to push Murano out in favor of someone else, who might remain nameless unless students receive another e-mail. Giving one person authority over both the system and the University is a bad idea, and contradicts the fractured, democratic nature of the state's higher educational system that has worked in the past.
At a time when administrators and others in the public's employ should be focusing on ways to improve the bang for peoples' educational buck, the Board of Regents would acquit itself well by discussing momentous changes to our educational system in a public way, or at the very least by being frank with the students and faculty.
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