Public university president? No worries if you're in Texas.

Good news if you're the president of a public college or university and find that a salary under a million dollars, bonuses, and special accommodations aren't enough for your struggling lifestyle of driving only a Maserati. According to Forbes, things are looking up, especially if you're in Texas.

The Chronicle of Higher Education released their latest report on the highest paid public school presidents and chancellors, and two of the top three--and three of the top ten--come from the Texas system, all of whom made over seven figure salaries.

News gets even better for the poor schlub presidents scraping by on $800,000 a year: Salaries rose by 5%, on average, for public school administrators. This is compared to the usual 2-3% annual raise typically seen.

So who are the top ten paid public university presidents and chancellors?

1. Michael Crow, President, Arizona State University $1,554,058

2. William McRaven, Chancellor, University of Texas system $1,500,000

3. John Sharp, Chancellor, Texas A&M University system office, $1,280,438

4. W. Kent Fuchs, President, University of Florida, $1,102,862

5. Michael A. McRobbie, President Indiana University system $1,067,074

6. Eric J. Barron, President, Pennsylvania State University at University Park, $1,039,717

7. Michael V. Drake, President, Ohio State University, $1,034,574

8. Michael K. Young, President, Texas A&M at College Station, $1,000,000

9. Jean E. Robillard, Interim President, University of Iowa, $929,045

10. Raymond Watts, President, University of Alabama at Birmingham, $890,000

Let's not forget that both Texas A&M and the University of Texas' head football coaches made roughly $5 million EACH last year. The basketball coaches? Potentially around $3 million.

I already knew the stereotype that everything was bigger in Texas. I just never knew that meant public higher education salaries as well.



Let's not kid ourselves, though. Tenured faculty is always told there is no room in the budget for salary increases. Likewise, colleges and universities--public and private--are relying more and more on assistant professors that can be paid on the cheap with little to no benefits offered.

But at least the administrators found money in the budget for themselves. Phew--I was worried there for a moment.

Highway road sign fonts are apparently a thing. And they're causing a debate.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHA) announced earlier this year they were removing their earlier approval of Clearview, a font that has had provisional acceptance by the government for over a decade. It had joined Highway Gothic as an acceptable road sign font. The Department of Transportation even Tweeted about it last month:

Safer like this or like this? @USDOTFHWA data says the #font matters. https://t.co/lBZ31PM7SX pic.twitter.com/b3sFYj1OkJ

— TransportationGov (@USDOT) February 4, 2016

Subtle, yet different enough to those who get asthmatic over font styles.

Exactly why Clearview was rejected after a decade of use, well, no one is entirely certain--but somehow in some back alley, where BIG FONT money is being doled out, the government wants do to away with the letters.

For years, studies from Penn State and Texas A&M suggested Clearview improved legibility of highway signs and, thus, improved driving safety. The longer, thinner letters fairly ubiquitous in the twenty states that have already adopted the font can increase signage awareness by up to 12%, according to one study. For a person driving 70mph, as Wired notes, that's 74ft of added reaction time. And as studies tend to do, other follow-ups said the difference was actually only negligible. Sigh.

The FHA claims they don't want to force states to adopt the licensing fee that comes with adopting the font. Meeker and Associates, the creative firm that developed the font in the 1990s, charges a one-time fee of $800 for lifetime use of the design, which will clearly cripple any state that relies off a piggy bank for its state funding. Donald Meeker, founder of the firm, finds it fairly incredulous that a state can't afford $800 in its annual budget.

"It’s a shame for the states," Meeker tells Wired. "Everybody knows [the old typeface] looks like a dog’s lunch."

Whoa. You know things just got serious when Alpo gets slammed.

If Natty Light was a university, it'd be these places.

Something called FiestaFrog.com released a list of the 100 Top Party Schools.

No such list would be complete unless Arizona State University topped it, being higher education's equivalent of a bad episode of COPS.

The top ten:

10. California State University, Chico

9. Syracuse University

8. University of Texas at Austin

7. Pennsylvania State University, Main Campus

6. Louisiana State University

5. University of Miami

4. West Virginia University

3. University of Wisconsin, Madison

2. Florida State University

1. Arizona State University

In a mild upset, Fitchburg State (my alma mater!) came in at #73, just going to prove that run down former mill towns with burnt out houses and crack fiends can inspire a party anytime!

The 10 Public Colleges with "Insanely Luxurious Dorms"

That's The Fiscal Times description.

What qualifies as "insanely luxurious dorms" to The Fiscal Times?

At Penn State:
...dorms with a microwave and fridge.

At the University of Michigan:
...single, double, and triple rooms (luxury!) with air conditioning and wifi.

At the University of Cincinnati:
...shared bathrooms and living rooms (dreamy!), and a state of the art gym.

At Colorado State University:
...air conditioning and heat, with a 700 person common dining area.

At East Stroudsburg University:
...moveable furniture and apartments with up to four bedrooms.

That's right--the lap of insane luxury is furniture that moves in giant apartments with four people.

When I was an undergraduate I lived in an apartment across the street from a potato chip factory, with a beaten down meth den next door where concoctions were brewed in the basement and excess leftovers dumped in the backyard. An elderly man pimped out fifty year old women from his second floor apartment, while a slew of Mercedes and BMWs parked out front for a half hour. Meanwhile, the apartment below me ran a chop shop, where they stole cars from Boston and stripped them of anything valuable. A prostitute was found murdered on some abandoned train tracks behind the complex I lived in. And one delightful day a local police officer pulled a gun on me while I walked my dog because they mistook me for a criminal.

By The Fiscal Times standards, I was living the dream.

Penn State student editor resigns after reporting Joe Paterno died...hours before he died.

Nothing's going right for Penn State these days.

Student editor, Devon Edwards, had it on good authority that sickly--and infamous--head coach, Joe Paterno, had lost his quick bout with lung cancer Saturday night. Edwards reported it, via Twitter. (140 characters of reporting gold, baby!)

Except Edwards was a little too eager. Paterno wasn't dead. Yet. Paterno would die hours later. Twitter is faster at things than Nature is.

Well, reporting something too early is sacrilegious in the world of journalism. National media outlets reported Paterno was dead because a Penn State student newspaper said he was dead (it's like a nerdy version of the game Telephone), so once the big boys got involved and were wrong, well, someone's head had to roll. Cue Devon Edwards.

Today, Edwards resigned as editor of Penn State student paper because he assumed people cared because he has a misguided view of how important his paper is because he has journalistic integrity and would like to have a job someday.

He might be the only person left at Penn State with some sort of judgment between right and wrong.