Wishing you the best, thanks

Now that the trustee election is over, please accept my sincere thanks for your very kind and expressive endorsement. This was clearly a long shot but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to offer reform assistance. My candidacy was motivated by a conviction that many more fundamental changes must take place to secure an excellent future for Indiana University. Trustees know this, I believe, and have been making commendable progress; but, they need a heightened sense of urgency and a reprioritizing of the toughest problems. There are arguably a lot of “third rails” in higher education that most officials would prefer not to touch, including the issues of: tenure, salary and benefits, escalating tuition and fee costs, textbook prices, delivery failures from lower education systems, frivolously restrictive teaching qualifications, inadequate basic teaching commitments, under-utilization of facilities, excessive time taken to graduate, inferior student residences and a general and unintentional neglect of the student customer. This doesn’t mean that IU isn’t one of the nation’s finest schools. It simply recognizes that we are all in trouble. I’m wishing Sue Talbot the very best as an excellent selection. My own immediate future calls for a year of reform work living with a transition government in the Balkans. Thanks again and best of luck.