I haven't seen much about this, but it's apparently turning into a big deal. And, as seemingly happens with increasing frequency these days, Gawker is there:

http://crookedtimber...-battle-heats-up/

CUNY administrators are coming under increasing fire for their decision to hire General David Petraeus to teach one course next year for anywhere from $150,000 to $200,000. The American Association of University Professors has denounced the decision. And now Republican State Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor, a Marine vet who fought in the Iraq War, has issued a scorching letter to CUNY interim chancellor William Kelly.

Lalor focuses on two issues. First, he charges CUNY with dishonesty. When Gawker first broke the story of Petraeus’s salary, it reported that he was going to be getting $200k. That report was based on Freedom of Information Law documents Gawker had obtained from CUNY. Within hours, however, CUNY announced that Petraeus was only going to get $150k and that part of his earnings would go to charity.

As Lalor points out, there’s something fishy about the timing of that announcement.

[...]

I have no idea if Lalor is right about whether tax-payers are footing the bill for this celebrity hire or not. But let’s assume CUNY is securing private funds for it. Isn’t that in itself a terrible waste of resources? Private donations don’t just roll in; university fundraisers work and cultivate donors to make specific donations for earmarked funds. The notion that even one paid member of the university staff is working right now to secure private money to pay for this hire is itself a scandal.

It’s also indicative of a larger problem: CUNY is being run (into the ground) by a group of men and women with no sense of how to educate students, how to build (and pay) a first-class teaching staff, and how to manage a great public institution.

$150-$200k for one course is pretty good... :-/ (It looks like normal Adjunct full professor salaries at CUNY are in the $110/hour range - http://www.qcc.cuny..../adjsalaries.html . Assuming a course is a semester - let's be generous and say it's a half-year, that's 8 h/day * 90 days * $110/hr = $80k, so he's getting at least 2x the going rate for a very well-paid adjunct, to teach a very light load.)

If one were cynical, one could point to this arrangement as a perfect illustration that conservatives take care of their own celebrities. Disgrace your position, undercut your commander, build up a cult of personality around yourself? That's Ok. Lay low for a few months, then get aboard the gravy train... :-(

It's good that there's substantial push-back on this. Let's hope it results in real change.

[edit:] Using Adjunct per-hour compensation was an attempt at a reasonable metric. But note that Adjuncts are often only paid for their class time. So $110/h for a 5 hour per week, 1 semester, course would only be about $10k - http://en.wikipedia....Adjunct_Professor . He's apparently being paid as if he were a tenured faculty member even though the workload is nothing like that. FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.

http://www.nytimes.c...to-1.html?hp&_r=0

Outrage does works some time. Good to know.

Cheers,
Scott.