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.

School superintendent steps down amid claims of plagiarism.

Mansfield, MA, school superintendent Brenda Hodges has stepped down from her post after allegations that her four minute commencement speech at last month's high school graduation was plagiarized from Navy Admiral William McRaven's commencement speech a month earlier at the University of Texas, Austin.

As The Boston Globe reports:

In his speech in May, available on YouTube, McRaven told a University of Texas at Austin audience that “if every one of you changed the lives of just 10 people, and each one of those folks changed the lives of another 10 people, just 10, then in five generations, 125 years, the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.”

In her speech, Hodges said that if “every one of you changed the lives of just five people, just five, then in five generations, 125 years, the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 400 million people.’’

Well, hey, might as well lower everyone's expectations by half and hope it makes things more realistic. Bonus points to Hodges.

Despite resigning, Hodges still claims she didn't plagiarize, stating that McRaven's speech was "a hundred times better," and that the admiral's speech wasn't really her inspiration, but instead that she largely borrowed passages from a pastor's talk in her native Oklahoma a year earlier. For not citing her pastor, Hodges apologized.

If you're desperately confused as to who is allegedly plagiarizing from whom at this point, you're not alone.

Julia Child went over a lot of potential titles before she landed on 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking.'

After a ten year process, famed chef and PBS pioneer, Julia Child, was ready to publish the cookbook she and her two partners, Simca Beck and Louisette Bertholle, had arduously compiled. 

In a letter to her editor Judith Jones, Child proposes a list of potential titles for the cookbook, including the ever-catchy Cooking Is My Hobby or the scintillating Food from France.

Things take a sexy turn when Child proposes Cooking for Love or, alternatively, The Passionate French Cook.

These copies of the letter Child sent to Jones from The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin show Child's complete list of potential titles, including the penciled in title which would ultimately be selected.

Julia Child Materials © 2012, The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. From the Harry Ransom Center's Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. records.

Julia Child Materials © 2012, The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. From the Harry Ransom Center's Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. records.

Alfred A Knopf, head of the publishing company, famously said about the potential title of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, "I'll eat my hat if that title sells."

As mentioned on the Julia Child page at the University of Texas, by 1974 Julia Child's cookbook sold 1.4 million copies with that title.

Somewhere, a hat died.