A big article in Sunday’s Star-Ledger describes how the scandal-racked University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey spent millions of dollars in recent years on boondoggle projects that, in some cases, have resulted in half-empty buildings, threats by federal agencies to withdraw major grants, and further evidence of the extent to which politics — not medicine, dentistry, research, or education — was the overriding priority for the troubled university, the nation’s largest health-sciences institution. The article, drawing on documents that the newspaper obtained after a court fight, describes a series of questionable decisions made by top officials, many of whom have since resigned under fire for other questionable dealings.

The problems seem largely to have stemmed from the university’s split into two cultures. “In one, nurses and doctors battled to provide health care in a poor, urban environment,” the article says. “But at the top were administrators who got their jobs through political patronage and whose basic job experience was not teaching or medicine, but state government and politics.”

The university, which is now under scrutiny from a federal monitor who has issued a series of reports on corruption and mismanagement there, now faces a possible forced merger with other public universities in New Jersey. The alleged corruption includes as much as $240-million in waste and fraud, no-bid contracts worth millions, kickbacks to cardiology doctors, expense-account and related frauds, no-show jobs for politicians, and influence-peddling by a trustee.