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Thanks for the recommendation. I followed your advice and I like what I see in the guy. It seems to me that in an era when there is soon to be declining attendance in universities, difficult decisions need to be made by universities. He seems to understand those need to be made. He also asked full time, tenured faculty to work more and eliminated some of the part time positions teaching classes. Sound efficient to me. I couldn't get a good feel for what eliminating classes means, but I'd much rather see the elimination of majors as a cost cutting effort. There are many majors that are useless and can be eliminated. I'm not so concerned about how faculty and students will "feel" about him. I take that back. I could care less about how faculty and students "feel" about anyone they hire. I care about if they person can do the job. Further, I care about if this guy can make a degree from UofA more valuable. This guy has made hard decisions. Tressel, on the other hand, has spent his days at UofA engaging in the type of "feel good" crap that has turned American universities into playgrounds for spoiled kids who what to spend four year playing and not learning. All the while, kids from other countries are coming over here and cleaning their clocks. They don't know it because they are too busy playing on rock walls to see it, but they sure as heck will feel it when they graduate with their mountain of debt as a result of paying for the playground.

It's not an either/or for me. Great question. I don't know if they are dumbed down or beaten down. Dr. Proenza has, for many years not, gotten to do whatever he wanted to do without much regard for the faculty. Tressel is his guy and maybe they just figure he is going to do whatever he wants to do anyhow. I've mentioned before I have a friend who is on faculty at USC (Los Angeles) and I posed your question to him and sent a link of the finalists. First, he was shocked there has not been a large public outcry from faculty about Tressel and thinks Tressel making it this far is a joke in itself. Additionally, while he doesn't know much about the candidates, he feels the candidate from Toledo would be the best just on a reading of the resumes because he would understand the needs of an Akron since Akron and Toledo are sort of like institutions. Personally, I don't see how anyone can look at the resumes of Tressel and the guy from Toledo and not pick the guy from Toledo. Tressel's resume is so flimsy it isn't even funny. The guy from Toledo has major accomplishments, in the ways it matters, at a university "similar" to Akron. My fear is there are many within the University who have gone so far down the Tressel Highway they can't turn back even if they know they are wrong.