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Miami faculty seething over mega contract for Mario Cristobal
By Keith Farner
Published:
Mario Cristobal reportedly agreed to an $80 million contract to be the new Hurricanes football. But that doesn’t sit well with a host of professors and faculty on campus who recently saw compensation cuts during the pandemic.
Many UM professors and other faculty, who were also forced to teach in person, are fuming and say staff morale has plunged, the Miami Herald reported.
Some members of the UM Faculty Senate view Mario Cristobal’s $80 million contract as only the latest sign of the administration’s disrespect for the academic staff at the private university. As part of deep pandemic cutbacks, the university had slashed more than $100 million in its matching contributions to faculty members’ retirement plans in the 2020-2021 academic year. Now, some faculty believe those cuts have helped bankroll lavish spending on athletics and construction projects and could hurt the school academically.
“It’s hard to imagine how the school really expects to compete for high quality academic talent when it is choosing to spend money in places that it seems to value more highly,” said one faculty member who did not want to be identified because of possible repercussions.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
