New chancellor faces tough challenge

Welcome to North Dakota, Hamid Shirvani.

In your job as the new chancellor of the North Dakota university system, you’ll have no shortage of work ahead of you. When you start in August, you’ll realize quickly you’re not in California anymore.

We hope you’re up to speed on the never-ending dispute over the University of North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux nickname and logo. Good luck cleaning up the mess at Dickinson State University and its scandal over awarding bogus degrees to some 600 foreign students. Oh, and don’t forget that you’ll be dealing with members of the North Dakota Legislature, some of whom will no doubt have questions for you about the university system’s $1.2 billion two-year budget.

Hopefully, there will be the parts of the job where you get to focus on actual student needs and priorities. You can never forget about the 49,000 students in the state’s six four-year schools and five two-year colleges, which shouldn’t be hard for you to do since you emphasized to the board that “students come first, students come second, students come third.” That sounds great.

The five members of the state Board of Higher Education who supported you offered high praise, calling you a “potential rock star and visionary” and someone who won’t be afraid to shake things up.

We hope they’re right. We wish you good luck in your new job. You’ll need it.

P.S. Congrats on scoring the $340,000-plus salary. Nice!

Tags: higher education, opinion, editorials