A SURVIVAL OF MORE INNOCENT DAYS? Owen at Boots and Sabers discovers that many senior administrators in the University of Wisconsin system have "backup jobs."

Traditionally, deans, provosts, and chancellors (using the Wisconsin terminology) are senior members of the faculty given additional responsibilities that they might hold by virtue of their long experience and wisdom (although that tradition might have died with Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who faced some campus unrest in his time) who might hold such positions for a few years before returning to faculty. (There is at least one former president and one former dean of Arts and Sciences who returned to faculty at Northern Illinois rather than retire as a flag officer or jump to another university; they both may have been happier for it.)

Methinks Owen doth protest too much:

Only in the warped world of government work would anything like this be considered acceptable. Do you know what happens in the private sector when employees “don’t measure up or if they do things to embarrass their institution?” They get fired.

Rene Lachmann.

More precisely, road foremen return to engine service, or, more generally, supervisors return to bargaining unit jobs all the time. On the other hand, mid-level university administrators (holding positions other than department chairman, dean, provost, chancellor) sometimes are failed scholars, frequently from disciplines with large reserve armies of the underemployed, and sometimes hired for purposes that may or may not be central to the university's mission. Whether those mid-levels ought to be accorded the same protections as accomplished faculty (who sometimes deserve it; there is a reason one traditionally greets the newly seated chairman or dean with condolences) is another matter.