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Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that our roles are set in high school. When I was at Reno High School I was editor of the school newspaper and reported for the downtown daily newspaper on RHS news. One of the student leaders at the school was named Dan Klaich. Today he's the new Nevada higher education chancellor and I find myself covering him again.

Most people (not counting, apparently, Sarah Palin) probably think that highly placed and highly paid jobs are desirable positions. But in times like these, the desirability of such positions drops sharply. Klaich took on the job of running Nevada's higher ed system at a time when the challenges are pretty steep.

Morale, after the governor tried to carve a third of the system out (and halve the size of the two university campuses), is very low. Even after the governor's cuts were beaten back, the system is not financially healthy, with the result that the business community is uncertain how much help higher education in Nevada can be to it in the future. Klaich replaces a chancellor who offended innumerable people.

Klaich brings pretty good credentials to the job. He went through Nevada schools and is steeped in knowledge of the state's problems. His career has not been narrowly limited to his own calling (law). He once headed an experimental fuel company. He was appointed by Gov. Richard Bryan as a Nevada regent (the Board of Regents governs the higher education system) and was elected on his own and eventually became board chair.

When I called Klaich for an interview after he became chancellor, he was having lunch with Sen. William Raggio, the Republican floor leader of the Nevada Senate and a supporter of the higher education system. I thought that this was a great example of the old boys' network at work. I did a little research and found that 12 Klaiches and six Raggios have graduated from Reno High School over the decades. Now that influence is being brought to bear on repairing a wounded system.

Klaich seems to be planning a maintenance administration. His predecessor launched a health care initiative. But Klaich doubts that anyone in his position would be able to take on new programs. Instead, he must do what is possible to keep the system running and try to be ready for better economic times.

"I don't think it's time to look for new innovative projects," he said. "We need to focus on our core missions and try to do a better job getting Nevada students into the system and then graduating them and into the workforce. There's nothing wrong with succeeding at our basic mission."

Even when Klaich would like to do something more, there are institutional barriers. When I asked him about plans for the Pahrump campus, for instance, he said, "The recession has just made that very, very difficult. Harry Reid is working on a Southern Nevada land bill to secure transfer of land. But the land is the easy part of it because if we're funding this with state dollars, I've seen the available bonding capacity and it's non-existent."

The Nevada Constitution limits the state's bonding capacity to "two percent of the assessed valuation of the state," and right now the state is banging against the ceiling of that limit.

"Unless we have a dramatic turnaround on the economy, unless the home construction industry revives, there will not be a capital construction budget for the state of Nevada," Klaich said.

After this year's legislature ended, Regents chairman James Dean Leavitt decided to reach out yet again to Gov. Jim Gibbons to try to build a working relationship between the chief executive and the campuses. Klaich is seen as an ideal person to handle the effort. "In the last 10 days as regents chairman, I've reached out to the governor's office," Leavitt said. "It's certainly the chancellor's responsibility, mine and the board's, to educate the governor to the value of higher education."

So why would anyone want this job in such a difficult time?

"I'd like to have a better economy, more money, but this is probably the best job in the state," Klaich said." I'm a product of Nevada schools and Nevada education, this is my passion, and we don't get to pick our times. I can't imagine not taking advantage of this opportunity. Maybe difficult times are better because the things you can do are that much more important."