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Comment by W-Stool | Hacker News Reader

I used to work at the University of Nevada, Reno - the institution cited here. The current president of the institution is a former Republican governor without a Ph.D (something nearly all university presidents have). The current VP of Finance is a former Reno city manager who left his job due to a series of sexual harrassment and hostile workplace scandals. After leaving his Reno city job he went to work for the Republican govenor who is now the UNR president.

I think you get the idea of what kind of institution UNR is morphing into.

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So is this position some sort of sinecure? Like what’s happening in Florida?

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/16/how-desantis-and-fl...

>The current president of the institution is a former Republican governor without a Ph.D (something nearly all university presidents have).

Brian Sandoval has a law degree, for which there is good precedent for university presidents to have in lieu of a PhD.

Two other governors who became university presidents immediately come to mind: David Boren (Oklahoma), Mitch Daniels (Purdue). Both with law degrees.

My first reaction was “yup that’s Reno”, but the same problem exists in colleges across the board, red states and blue states, socially conservative states and anything-goes states.

"former Republican governor without a Ph.D" - Are these traits disqualifiers for some reason? In particular, maybe NOT having a Ph.D. could be considered a good thing in this case. Is there anything else to say about this person's qualifications or lack thereof?

Is a general without combat experience fit to lead?

Of course.

I think that’s plausible.

A better analogy would be a general who had never been a junior officer.

It's possible in theory. Someone with unique skills can be directly commissioned at the O-4, O-5, or even O-6 ranks without ever being a junior officer. After commissioning they can eventually be promoted to O-7 (brigadier general or equivalent) just like any other officer.

https://talent.army.mil/direct-commissioning/

William Knudsen was even commissioned directly at O-9 (Lieutenant General) during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Knudsen

You might want to change that to "lead in a war?" There's a bunch of high level people at the Pentagon that are glorified procurement officers.

That's kind of a loaded question from an ethical standpoint, because the obvious answer ("No") tends to justify getting into an unnecessary war every so often to keep your armed forces from getting too rusty. But it's an interesting one.

My father was a medical doctor in the army. He rose to the rank of Colonel and they wanted him to become a general, but he didn't want to put in the number of years that would required to get his pension at the general level, so he declined. So... yes, you can become a general with zero combat experience.

For sake of analogy, I simplified. There are many pathways up the ranks, and the general of today may not ever engage in a theatre of war depending on country.

Experience however, does contribute to one's station -- whether basic training, joint exercises or in inopportune times, the battlefield.

And the famous early computer scientist Grace Hopper retired as a rear admiral in the US Navy despite not having combat experience either. But that's because she was career Navy, and basically the only way the military can give you a promotion is by increasing your rank.

My university had a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff[1] as the president when the pandemic hit. IMO we were lucky to have him as president.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Myers

Logistics experience seems more relevant to that job

You left off the part that answers your question:

> (something nearly all university presidents have)

So yea, it looks like it would normally be a disqualifier. I'd imagine it's for the same reason that not being a part of a union means you can't be leader of the union.

Or why Boeing should probably have had a signification number of engineers at the top levels over the last decades.

EDIT: There's a peculiar meme that I first noticed in the early 2010s that it's actually good to not know anything about what you're doing because you can "innovate" and "disrupt" better. I remember first hearing it explicitly stated by the founder of B.S. startup uBeam. Wonder how that's turning out...

Not so much disqualifiers as redundant. If either of these traits appeal to you, I imagine that both would.

> "former Republican governor without a Ph.D" - Are these traits disqualifiers for some reason?

A Ph.D. is a pretty reasonable qualification to expect of a university director.

Unless you come from the law faculty.

Isn’t that rather splitting hairs as they’d have equivalent degrees?

And, in fact, Brian Sandoval does indeed have a law degree.

Well yes and no. A large fraction of law professors don't have academic degrees past JD which despite having 'Doctor' in its name, is not the equivalent of a Phd. On the other hand they likely would have a large number of publications or a significant body of work as a clerk for an important court.

The current president spent a lot of money acquiring and maintaining a school in Incline Village. The idea behind this was to attract more students. However, they failed to enroll a single student in Fall 2023. He believes college is a lifestyle. He started a program to give all freshmen an iPad and wants them to 'spend a semester at Tahoe.'

I don't think being a governor is a bad experience, but not having a doctoral degree is a very unfavorable situation because essentially all academic research stems from holders of doctoral degrees. A doctoral degree is the foundational course on how to conduct research. In this scenario, how can someone without a doctoral degree lead an academic institution in its activities?

But we’re talking about the office of the president. Isn’t this role more analogous to the CEO?

The president isn’t researching as an individual practitioner, but rather as an executive administrator.

CEOs for many companies should have some amount of 'lower level' experience in the business of the company. I would argue the 'CEO' for institutions focused primarily on research should have a relatively good amount of experience with performing the research. A doctoral degree is a pretty good indicator that the person has done some serious research, so it does not seem unreasonable to me to want the person leading a research institution to have one.

But isn’t University of Nevada a simply a state school?

I understand they have some research programs, but this primarily is a higher ed institution.

If there primary focus was research I’d agree with you.

It's a state school, but Nevada isn't exactly overflowing with them, so in the context of the higher-ed system in Nevada, they not 'simply' a state school.

unfortunately, usually professors in university should have Ph.D. let people who focus on research cutting-edge technology/knowledge to teach students in a higher education is important (at least in a perfect world).

Outside of the northeast, most large research universities in the US are state schools.

I mean, it's... suspect, anyway. "University president" is not a good retirement option for worn-out politicians, in that it involves doing an actual responsible job. Whatever happened to them just corruptly joining corporate boards and things?

Like, maybe it's innocent, and they really were the best person for the job, appointed via a competitive recruitment process, but... I mean, come on, now, if you'll believe that you'll believe anything.

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