Budget Crisis Prompts Administrator to Bail on Alaska Job

The administrator who was supposed to become director of a branch campus of the University of Alaska at Anchorage next week has withdrawn from the job, the Associated Press reported. Jessica Paugh, an assistant dean at Colorado Technical College, told the university's president in an email message late last month that "in light of the unprecedented drastic budget constraints and pending changes to the university, I cannot uproot my life to come to Alaska with a very bleak future ahead."

Administrators and regents at the University of Alaska system have been deciding in recent days how to deal with the 41 percent state funding cut imposed by Governor Mike Dunleavy.