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SUN FILE PHOTO
Jim Murren
Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
Sun Archives
On the Strip, that length of Las Vegas that is part Blade Runner and all Disneyland, there is someone who is neither.
He is Jim Murren, chairman of MGM Resorts International, one of the biggest casino operators in the world. At 47,000 employees, all but 1,000 in Clark County, MGM is the state’s largest private employer.
Murren, 48, is worried about education and wants to counter something he has heard too often:
Why, the reasoning goes, stay in school when you can make a good living parking cars at the Bellagio?
As the boss of the Bellagio, Murren sees red:
“I’m enraged with that statement. It is devoid of logic and fact and any understanding of who we are as a company or the industry or reality.”
Because new jobs are scarce, Murren added, “with a company like ours that depends solely on the health of the community for our existence, we have to value education. A highly educated workforce is obviously better for us as the largest employer.”
Murren has lived in Las Vegas for 13 years and grew up in Fairfield, Conn., where his family was middle-class in a wealthy town. The son of a housewife and a former Roman Catholic seminarian turned attorney, Murren attended public schools.
He graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, where he concentrated on art history and urban studies. He thought he might become an architect.
But Murren became a financial analyst on Wall Street and was hired as a numbers man at MGM, where he became chairman in 2008.
With stakes in Aria, the Bellagio, Mirage, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, Monte Carlo, New York-New York, Excalibur and Circus Circus, Murren’s company rises and falls with gaming.
MGM’s stock peaked at nearly $100 a share in 2007, spiraled downward to less than $2 in 2009, and has leveled off at more than $11 recently.
CityCenter, Murren’s brainchild of chrome and ambition, skirted bankruptcy last year. He once described CityCenter as a “corporate near-death experience.”
Last week, Murren received an “Education Hero” award from the Public Education Foundation for his philanthropy and advocacy. In an interview, he talked about education — his own and that in Nevada — as well as the need to cut state expenses and raise taxes.
Excerpts from the interview:
Why did you choose Trinity College?
“I wanted to go to a smaller school, not across the country ... I preferred to be able to drive to where I’m going to school. I didn’t know what I wanted to go into, but I wanted a liberal arts education. I felt very strongly that if I could develop my communications skills, become a better writer, communicate in public — that would be helpful to me. And Trinity gave me financial aid.”
You love art and math. How does that work?
“I’m left-handed (laughs). My mom is an amateur artist. I took oil painting classes very early. I had my own little shows in the library in Fairfield. I love to paint. I love the serenity of it; I love being by myself. But, yes, I’ve always been good at math. Math always came easy to me. I first took calculus in high school. Then in college I took economics.”
If I were a man from Mars, what would you tell me about education in Nevada?
“I would say ‘needs improvement.’ There are quality educators. But it is a far, far cry from where we should be, given the community that we are. It’s a product of underinvestment for decades. It’s a product of a lack of accountability and leadership in certain areas. It’s a very big disconnect between what I otherwise believe to be some high-quality life experiences that (smiles) you as a man from Mars would enjoy.”
What to do?
“Are we underfunded? Yes. Are we also not funding correctly? Yes. From a businessperson’s perspective, I have to look at this problem like I would look at the problems we have here” at MGM. “It has to be done from a bottom-up perspective.”
Such as?
“No. 1, be part of the dialogue, and we are.” (Murren is a member of various education boards, including the UNLV Foundation board of trustees.) “No. 2, I would do an inventory of where we stand today. A very candid, clear inventory of our assets and where our gaps are, where higher education is, where K through 12 is.”
What about higher education?
“No. 1, I would determine that bigger is not better. It isn’t in my business. Better is better. When I look at the university system, I would identify programs where we’ve already developed competencies and invest in them. I would invest more in the hotel school, anything to do with medicine, nursing, primary care and health services in general.”
What about elementary, middle and high schools?
“I do believe class sizes are too large; I believe we need to keep children in school. I do believe that teachers should be held accountable for performance. What’s missing is we can’t find the right metric to hold teachers accountable.”
How would you evaluate teachers?
“The take-away I get from talking to teachers is they know who the good teachers are and who the bad teachers are. There are qualitative and quantitative measures, but you have to empower the schools. It has to be done at the local level because one size doesn’t fit all. We learned the mosaic principle on Wall Street: You take bits and pieces from different sources and put them together for an investment thesis. And we don’t just look at the numbers.”
What about the $3 billion budget deficit?
“We need to raise taxes in certain areas. We have to. I’m a Republican and I’m not supposed to say that. But there is no company that will be receptive to raising revenue if it doesn’t come with some very serious thought on reducing expenses. We are going to need some very brave men and women in Carson City. I am looking for some heroes.”
"It is devoid of logic and fact and any understanding of who we are as a company or the industry or reality."
Really?
Besides that fact that this statement describes, ironically, the CityCenter project, Murren is once again showing the world how out of touch he is.
Let's look at this way. Why would a kid who grew up in Las Vegas go to UNLV, or any other college for that matter, rack up a student loan debt that he/she would be paying off until they were almost 50 years old, only to be offered a job that starts at $10 an hour? When you're rich it's easy to blow a lot of hot air. But the truth is simple. If a person can skip college and make a very happy living parking cars without the headaches of management and get a decent amount of time off each year to do the things they enjoy then why wouldn't they? College, Mr. M, isn't for everyone. Once again you're ramming your taste and ideals down everyone's throat.
I wonder if this sudden "passion" for education stems from the fact that Murren spearheaded one of the most obtuse, esoteric messes in the history of Las Vegas. Is it education he's worried about or programming people to see things his way.
And as far as his "concern" for our underfunded school system - give me a big fat break already! Murren's company has done everything possible to avoid paying taxes that would have gone directly to Nevada schools. They lobby Carson City, they lobby Congress, they lobby, lobby, lobby to keep from coughing up and to thwart other beneficial projects such as a state lottery.
I'm not sure what this article is about but if The Sun is becoming a puff rag for failing corporations then I'm done with this paper for good. Instead of hearing this man's thoughts about education, I'd rather hear how he's going to keep his corporation, which is still in the red and operating in negative earnings, from going under and pulling the rest of the Las Vegas economy with it.
So long as MGM, the largest employer and corporation in Nevada, continues to falter our education system will go with it. The less they make and the more that goes into the pockets of their executives, the less will go back to the state and community for essential services.
The hypocrisy in this town is simply nauseating.
And, we are suppose to take this guy seriously? Education was his last concern over the past 2 decades that it has fallen to the bottom of the heap in national rankings. You don't need no stinkin' education to mop and polish the brass at MGM. . .
Well, here's a message that speaks volumes. People are leaving Las Vegas. They are making choices about THEIR quality of life, and they will be supporting companies and communities who support them and THEIR values. They have finally "got" it.
They are taking their power, because if they don't somebody else will, and has . . .repeatedly.
Mr. Murren's statement about being enraged seems disingenuous. If he really wanted a better educated workforce, he would require that all MGM Resorts International employees have a high school diploma before hiring.
It's in a pig's eye tht Mr. Murren wants a well educated work force. His corporation certainly doesn't want to pay higher and fairer shares of state gaming taxes to advance education; in fact, they lobbied against it in the last legislature. They are more interested in, and have never spoken out against, or lobbied against illegal trespassers being hired locally; he and his corporation have not supported state laws punishing businesses that do hire illegal tresspasser aliens as employees. As far as being concerned about a well educated work force that is a phony blub if every there was one. Educated workers may demand higher salaries, benefits, health insurance and job security than the illegal tresspassers or others with poor educational backgrounds and that is not what the resorts and gaming moguls want at all. As members of the Chamber of Commerce they are more intersted in stealing the retirements and benefits of teachers.
Why does the SUN goe to a strip CEO for opinions on how to improve education but does not interview 15 - 20 retired CCSD teachers with actual long term classroom teaching experience and known reputations as excellence teachers? Who are the real experts and know the most about actual teaching than an actual former classrom teacher? There are many retired and excellent former disrict teachers that have never been consulted. This article is a whitewash when it comes to revealing anythng worthwhile about improving education.
Oh, if Hank Greenspun were alive today he would never have allowed this article to be printed. This paper is going into the dumpster because of its lack of integrity, merit and fothright reporting. This is a joke! This paper has lost it's hard hitting, dig for the truth, support and back the people format and attitude of days gone by. This paper is becoming too much of a carbon copy of the LV Review Journal is advancing more and ore negativety toward classroom teachers than ever before. Hank Greenspun was great supporter of education, teachers and teaching in this valley. Those of us who have given the best years of our lives and professional careers to teaching lost the best friend we ever had.
I'd be finished with my education by now if I didn't have to work so much mandatory overtime as a salaried team member at the casino I work at. The educated people do a few years at a joint and move on, the uneducated workers are loyal.
If they are going to raise taxes it should be raised from the Hotels and Casinos not the people who live here.
I know quite a few educators here and it bothers me that their 'lack of accountability' is cited as a primary reason education falls short. The shortfall is really due to lazy, ignorant parents that send their kids off to school short of calories, attention and intellectual stimulation.
Jim Murren looks to have been introduced to painting by his mother. You can bet a big reason he is successful comes from having parents that cared about his intellectual and cultural development.
How many kids here in Vegas are getting that same kind of jump start at home? A precious few, it would appear. And the results? A continuing inability to turn out educated people that attract companies looking for an educated workforce.
The result of this cycle of failure is more dependence on gaming for jobs, and tax revenues. Murren should divert a few dollars spent lobbying in Carson City and start a public service campaign urging parents to step up. If they did, and it worked even a little, it would end up saving MGM a lot of money in the long run.
vsestini, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask a well-educated, financially successful man, that runs the biggest company in the state for his take on ways to improve the education system, especially since he is involved, to an extent.
I agree that the Sun should ask CCSD teachers for their recommendations, and they have (recently), but I can almost guaranty that they will not include any accountability in their suggestions. They're an interested party, and they're affected by the plans that would be implemented. I generally hear the complaints about the parents, which is certainly an issue, but not one that we have any control over. We actually can control the quality of the teachers and administrators, so like it or not, that's where the attention should be focused. We can certainly plea to parents to get involved and support the students, but those pleas are only so effective.
The fact that the NV education system is the worst in the country, with no immediate plan for any drastic changes, reduces the credibility of anyone from inside the system. I know there are some great teachers, but overall, the system is a failure and has been for a long time.
Don't forget about 9/11 when MGM laid off thousands of employees, yet at the same time giving themselves huge bonuses. Who really cares about Jim Murren or any other execs like him.
What does Mr. Murren really mean about having a "highly educated workforce" when he subjects the "lower educated workforce" to breathing secondhand smoke all day, every day in the casinos, bars and nightclubs of every property MGM owns?
He has clearly established a separation of the educated and not-so educated workforce within the company. The not-so educated workforce suffers from heart disease, emphysema, bronchitis, lung cancer, etc. They are expendable.
But the "highly educated workforce," has nice, smoke-free offices that won't give them disease and cancer.
And how much more hypocritical can both of the Murren's be when his wife, Heather Murren, is with the Nevada Cancer Institute which takes casino donations and does nothing about keeping people from breathing cancer-causing secondhand smoke in the casinos! What a conflict! She is supposed to fight cancer... and he dishes it out!
Mr. Murren is the one who needs to be educated.
Most of the responses to Mr. Murren's comments illustrate that Col. Jessup's (Jack Nicholson's) line in "A Few Good Men" (Castle Rock Entertainment, Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1992): "You can't handle the truth" has become an accurate measure a large part of America today.