… with the yearly university-presidents-are-obscenely-overpaid story. Yes, many, including the recently retired president of George Washington University, were and are obscenely overpaid.
People occasionally fuss about GW’s president’s salary, and it’s cited in this year’s Washington Post article about the latest obscenities (“Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, who stepped down from George Washington University last year, received nearly $800,000 in 2006.”), but you have to put his salary in context.
Not the context he himself probably puts it in — he was radically underpaid compared to corporate CEO’s — but in the context of other university presidents.
And not that of Harvard’s president (Larry Summers, president of Harvard when Trachtenberg was president of GW, made $300,000 less than Trachtenberg), but of neighboring university presidents. People like American University’s Benjamin Ladner, whose spectacular greed, abetted by fellow vulgarians on the board of trustees, created a very noisy national scandal. Compared to Ladner, from whom AU may never recover, Trachtenberg looked moderate. Or something. I guess. Anyway, he’s not president anymore, and UD doesn’t know the new president’s salary.
The article quotes Charles Grassley, scourge of billion-dollar endowments and million-dollar presidents, saying the obvious stuff about how shameful greedy university presidents are… But UD can only repeat here what she’s said so often on this blog. Once you let university presidents convince you that universities are indistinguishable from corporations, you can’t complain when the presidents insist on being paid like CEOs. It’s the same point with football coaches at universities. The fact that they’re at a place called a university is irrelevant. They’re at a physical location subject to the exact same rules of the market as a real estate office, an investment bank, or a landfill. If there’s nothing distinctive about a university, then there’s absolutely no reason to expect people who take administrative jobs at a university to expect less compensation than they would get if they were running, say, a chain of dog grooming franchises.
*****************
UPDATE:
At Minding the Campus, Anthony Paletta elaborates on some of this.
He quotes UD on dog grooming, and one of his commenters writes: “At least at dog grooming franchises the dogs really do get groomed.”
November 17th, 2008 at 6:07AM
Along with coaches, how about throwing in some faculty salaries? The mindless competition for "stars" produces much obscenity (but not many stars).
November 17th, 2008 at 6:26AM
Obscenely high, yes, but not as high as they seem. These figures (at least the ones in my local paper) are total compensation, not salary — and thus include substantial but basically reasonable items such as housing, a car, etc. They are not comparable to faculty salaries.
That said, these numbers have taken off over the past 25 years, along with the pay of corporate CEOs.
November 17th, 2008 at 6:44AM
Actually, Mr Punch, in following many of these stories over the years, I find that (similar to corporate executives) it’s very often the case that we’re NOT being told all of what university presidents earn. It’s chronically the case with university coaches, of course. Buyout clauses and country club memberships are always appearing at the last minute, etc.
And this is also about innocuous words, like the one you use — “car” — and what they can really mean. Quite a few university presidents are squired about in limousines — ever the justifiable expense in a failing economy…
Look at the Suffolk Univ. story — he’s the guy with the highest compensation this year. I doubt the Suffolk community understood all these years that the leader of their very modest school was on his way toward earning over 2 million.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/education/17college.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin
Again, as with coaches and corporate executives, there are all sorts of incentives for keeping aspects of university presidential compensation packets hidden. Happens all the time.
November 17th, 2008 at 8:04AM
A piece that needs to be tossed in is that many presidents will be invited to serve on corporate boards for which they are paid. Our own illustrious leader has a deal that requires him to attend a couple of meetings and pays him annually about as much as we would spend on a new English professor.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:30AM
There is a semi-technical term for this sort of thing — snakes in suits. There is even a recent little and inexpensive book by that title. One of the authors is Robert Hare, who developed the standard scale for psychopathy. Recommended reading.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:38AM
And all of this is happening as more and more faculty are spending large parts of their careers–or entire careers–as adjuncts. Ever heard of an adjunct dean or president?
Note also that according to a recent CHE story, two presidents who were on the Bear, Stearns board may now end up being held partly responsible for the firm’s collapse. Hard to see how you can keep your mind on the campus when you’re being sued by stockholders.
November 17th, 2008 at 1:27PM
It is obvious that many of these people are overpaid.
But I repeat: what about the history professor who teaches a handful of students and is paid $120,000 because he brings prestige to the institution? Is that any more justified (especially when, as Andy – I mean Tony – says, adjuncts are paid peanuts for teaching masses of students).
Presidential salaries are just part of a system of questionable priorities and waste where the victims, financial and intellectual, are the students.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:31AM
The other thing this tells us is that Presidents see themselves NOT in relation to the faculty, but in relation to corporate leaders. So even those who started on the faculty no longer see that as their point of reference. We’re irrelevant to them.
November 18th, 2008 at 3:39PM
In regard to that "overpaid" history professor at $120k, if he or she were teaching at a private university, where tuition is running $35k per year, or $3,500 per course (assuming students take 15 hours, or three five-hour courses per semester) then it would not take very many students’ tuition to more than make up that professor’s salary.