Remember “Professor Smartypants” (a.k.a. Richard “Ric” Routh)?
He’s the University of South Carolina Upstate professor we busted last spring using your money to subsidized a variety of self-serving for-profit activities.
Routh’s scandal was first exposed in this exclusive report published by FITS. A follow-up report revealed the extent to which “Smartypants” – who drew a $66,861 annual salary from taxpayers to teach students “business informatics” at USC-Upstate – was leveraging taxpayer time, facilities and equipment to promote his enterprises.
As a result of those reports – and a subsequent investigation by the S.C. Attorney General’s office – Routh was suspended. Now we’re told the school has decided not to renew his contract.
Good … chalk another one for our informed network of sources.
In addition to skimming tax money to fund his shady investment schemes, Routh also offered a very dim assessment of the students he was being paid to teach (and by extension South Carolina’s worst-in-the-nation government-run school system).
“More than one-third of them are incapable of figuring out what 10 percent of a billion dollars is,” Routh said in a video promoting investment in one of his scams. “Most of them have no clue that you need to collect 1,000 different piles of a billion dollars in each pile in order to have a trillion dollars.”
He later added that “these same students have no idea that we even have a separation of powers in our federal government, or why that is historically important.”
Nice …
Anyway, we’re glad to see Routh is on the way out. However eliminating small-dollar waste like this isn’t really a “victory.” Especially not when these subsidized schools always find other things to spend the money on. The real victory will come when government acknowledges “higher education” is a task best left to the private sector.
35 comments
Smeagol has left the building.
Great! Can GrandTango teach there now?
Universities’ want nothing to do w/ honesty and truth. They are liberals and democrat….They hate and fear people like me…while they demand tolerance of every fetish their minions and degenerate minds can conjure…
What most universities ‘want’, is nothing to do with insanity.
Although, I agree with you in that universities do require uniform thought for the most part. They churn out compliant worker bee masses to feed the corporate machine.
Compliant worker bees don’t question for the most part, they obey, and that’s what most universities are good training grounds for.
Imagine that: A contributor who works together and produces to meet our needs, instead of F*#ks up everything, like the government Dumb@$$#$, do…while they PRODUCE nothing, but tax bills….
So are you arguing that universities are good?
Contact the Koch Brothers. They might endow a professorship for GrandTango.
Sheldon Adelson would I am sure!
Yes – only if GT can teach the students to type on a keyboard like him — using his hairy Yeti paws.
This whole escapade is just too funny!! 70s James Bond villain wannabe! Good one Will!
Didn’t FITS (who loved Hodges just as much) get caught using his influence, with the morally-compromised Sanford, to score a bad ride from a slick, favor-seeking car dealer???…
And wasn’t FITS father a college professor, riding the gov’t gravy train for decades???…
The hypocrisy is the problem I have with it. SC will NEVER change, if the Good Ol’ Boys, and Girls, are the arbiters of morality…
In other words: When you’re Filthy from Corruption, I’ll be D*@m#d if I’m going to let FITS pontificate to me…
Always great to hear the sound of a cockroach being crushed under the shoe of justice
Personally, I enjoy the “crunching” sound.
Maybe he is starting a new ugly shirt with matching t-shirt company.
Meanwhile a Vice Chancellor lives in Wisconsin and receives a travel allowance of 10 grand a year so she can visit once a month or so. How do you get a $200,000+ package as a state employee and live half way across the country?
It’s not who you know, it’s who you blow in this state.
And Pastides raises tuition every year and this is where it goes? It’s time a for a change in Columbia.
A vice chancellor can live in Wisconsin but a backward fundamentalist university in SPARTANBURG SC can’t support a robust and vital program in Women’s and Gender Studies!!!! Administration just put the university back 50 years as retribution for exposing current LGBTQ and feminist issues to Jesus freaks and other bible sheltered proddy dogs, clamheads and carolas. Evidently Jesus loves football and other athletics.
“We have looked across Academic Affairs for ways to reduce administrative costs, and we are implementing many changes,” said Moore. “Not only is this decision not punitive or a response to external pressure, it is part of an effort to be consistent and systematic across Academic Affairs in how we administer and support various programs.”
What was left this out:
“All reductions are within Academic Affairs therefore all the vital, non-academic functions of the University will remain constant and unaffected. These functions include administrative fluff, perks and benefits such as trips to China, China, China, China and China only to give the students reduced tuition to come to Upstate, multiple country club and other memberships, the necessity of increasing university administration, and the protection of our sacred cow: athletics.”
Not sure why you’re bashing the professor for pointing out that the quality of students received from K12 system is, on average, downright sad. None of the things he says is untrue, or even that far off base or inappropriate. Spend some time in an entry level college environment before undercutting his opinion on the matter.
The problem is not what he said, it’s what he’s done, which makes it hard to care much about what he said, even if it’s accurate.
So Routh was “was leveraging taxpayer time, facilities and equipment to promote his enterprises?” I guess his problem was not holding elective office while doing so?
True. Mike Forrester is the champ at sucking on he taxpayer’s tit with his $90,808 state salary promoting economic development.
Mike Forrester has gotten by with that shit for years
suggesting the private sector would produce better results for higher ed is sub-sub-moronic. it’s maybe the dumbest thing you’ve ever written. very ballsy. but holy cow dumb.
Unfortunately he is correct is assessing the students that are being turned out!
He still looks like an insect.
No no no no no! He is a handsome man!!
I just farted for over 8 seconds. I think it must be those onion rings.
Would there be fewer of these characters in a libertarian universe?
The real issue is the disruptive and retaliative elimination of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. Go to change.org and sign the petition now!!
The one that must go is Tom Moore!!!! Support the vote of no confidence!
Fire Moore and more! Fire STW! Fire JM! Fire CH!!
That would save million$ a year. Good start. Why stop there?
NO MORE MOORE!! NO MORE MOORE!!!