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.

Texas A&M University receives rare first edition copy of 'The Hobbit' from George R.R. Martin

Smaug looks thinner than expected.

Over the years, Texas A&M University has developed one of the finest collection of books in the world. From Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote de la Mancha, parts I and II, dating from 1617, to Walt Whitman's 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, the university has made a way of celebrating every new millionth book added to its collection.

Now, George R.R. Martin has donated a rare first edition of J.R.R Tolkien's The Hobbit, one of only 1,500 copies ever published, to celebrate A&M's five-millionth book.

In a speech commemorating the donation, Martin stressed the need for libraries and preservation. "The stories that we tell each other, the stories that we grow up on, the stories that help shape our values and shape our lives, we still love and remember," he said. "This is the stuff that should be preserved.”



There's waaaaay too many Rs going on in the names here.