Anyone who has gone to college over the past few years knows that tuition costs have reached levels that are a joke. And colleges just keep raising tuition (basically, just because they can) – this then gives them loads of cash to spend as they wish, like the almost $150,000 California State University’s Palm Desert Campus (a satellite campus of Cal. State San Bernardino) is paying one man to “manage” one class this year.
CSUSBPDC (I know right?) is an odd college campus. There is no library, no housing, and while there is a theater – there is no arts program offered and there is nothing on the theater’s schedule that would be anything of interest to a college student (or any person under the age of 70). But hey, if you want a degree, without leaving The Coachella Valley, there are not a whole lot of other options.
For those struggling with tuition, it may come as a surprise that The Desert Sun reports the college has one man on the payroll with a salary of $149,000 – and that man manages only one class. Yup, one class. And not teach it, John Welty “manages it” by bringing in guest speakers. Sweet gig huh?
So how does one get a job like that? Well, for starters, be sure to share the same bed with the dean of the campus – something that Welty does as he is married to Sharon Brown-Welty, the dean of the Palm Desert school. Second, retire after being a high ranking CSU official elsewhere – Welty was the longtime president of California State Fresno.
After retiring from his Fresno post last year, Welty was paid $223,000 for a year of vacation to help him “transition” to his new job part Cal State’s “Trustee Professorship Program”. (Hold on a second, as someone still paying off student loans to CSUSBPDC, I am going to go outside and scream for a few minutes and maybe break some stuff).
(Okay, I am back) The last 20 years have seen tuition costs rise to three times what they were in the early 1990s. The average student graduates a CSU school with over $18,000 in debt.
Welty told The Desert Sun that he is worth every penny saying “I think I am providing value in all the things I am doing. I wouldn’t take on the job if I didn’t.”
I graduated from CSUSB-PDC almost 10 years ago and have received “fundraising” phone calls at least a half a dozen times per year ever since. I will not give another dime to any California State campus – as it looks to me, like they have far more money than they know what to do with.
I thought, like so many of you, that I was paying for an education – not for one man to treat the campus like his own personal piggy bank.
