Santiago's Escape Plan To Florida Undercuts Local Efforts

It's not earth-shaking news that UW-Milwaukee's chancellor Carlos Santiago is vying for the top post at Florida International University, in Miami.

Nancy Zimpher before him bolted in 2004 to Cincinnati: college and university administrators are usually looking for greener pastures and bigger territories to manage, and Santiago would more than double his $300,000 UW-Milwaukee annual salary if he gets the Florida post.

And he has family and other links to Florida, so if you're Santiago, it makes perfect sense to go for it.

Santiago, however, is in the middle of ambitious expansion plans in Milwaukee and its environs, and has convinced the state and donors to contribute heavily to new, research-oriented programs; his unequivocal signal that he wants to be elsewhere does undercut his planning as long as he's here.

No one likes to feel as if they were merely a stepping stone, thus stepped on.