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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Getting Rich 

George Washington University's incoming president is unhappy about the fact that GW is the most expensive university in the country, and he plans to reduce tuition.

But without that enormous tuition, GW's outgoing president wouldn't have had a chance to scrape together a living.

His salary - close to a million dollars - didn't make him rich, he explains in a recent interview:


'Being a university president is a great privilege, and it comes with tremendous rewards. Getting rich is not one of them.'



Although many American university presidents are compensated, like Stephen Trachtenberg, in the million dollar range, and enjoy free housing, chauffeuring, corporate board money and retention perks, this fails to make them rich.

On the other hand, it has a terrific effect on faculty salaries: "If the presidents are paid well, it follows, or it should follow, that the professor will be celebrated and honored and also fairly compensated."




'Q. What aspects of the job justify paying presidents so much more than faculty members?

A. Well, faculty get tenure. That's worth something. Presidents don't get tenure. They serve at the will of the board. So there's a risk factor, and that ought to be worth some compensation. Secondly, faculty get sabbaticals. Presidents work 12 months a year, … and they don't conventionally get sabbaticals. If a sabbatical is good for a professor, why isn't it good for a president? Faculty generally get 20-percent time off for consulting. Conventionally presidents don't have 20 percent to give to consulting, although some do sit on boards of trustees and boards of directors of outside companies. That, properly done, is compensation — although I worry sometimes that that's abused. You'll see a president who is serving on six boards or eight boards, and that's crazy.'


Presidents get, or are given, faculty tenure, which means that they have a highly-paid university position waiting for them when they leave the presidency. No risk there.

Universities are desperate for presidents, so even the worst can get jobs elsewhere, as Trachtenberg acknowledges earlier in the interview, when talking about how the very competitive market for presidents has pushed up compensation.

Many university presidents get sabbaticals, or significant breaks that aren't called sabbaticals. It's something they negotiate in their contracts.

Most professors UD knows of work twelve months a year.

The board situation is a notorious scandal, with university presidents taking tens of thousands of dollars and squandering university time to go to corporate retreats and do nothing.
Posted at: 11/13/2007 05:41:00 AM