… Even though [Rutgers athletic director Robert] Mulcahy was dismissed, the university will continue to pay his generous salary — and his over-the-top perks — for the next 18 months while getting nothing in return. If he deserved to be fired, he deserved to be prevented from continuing to feed at the public trough.
But Mulcahy will be fed, and fed well. A university spokesman told the Bergen Record this week the university is obliged to honor the remainder of Mulcahy’s contract. His salary alone will cost them another $511,875. He will continue to receive a car or annual automobile stipend of $12,000 and health benefits and insurance for the next 18 months.
Rutgers also must pay Mulcahy’s annual membership fees at the exclusive Baltusrol golf club, believed to be about $8,000. That’s outrageous. Why should taxpayers and struggling college students have to foot the bill for any already highly paid public employee — a fired employee, no less — to sharpen his golf game?…
January 9th, 2009 at 10:52AM
People don’t seem to grasp that the time to resolve these issues is *before the contract is signed*. Once it is signed, it must be honored, unless we want to give someone/something completely unlimited discretion to abrogate existing contracts.
Not sure how it works in academia, but in business, contracts with ridiculous severance provisions are usually signed when the company is (a)desperate, (b)usually because it failed to develop adequate internal talent for the job, (c)is looking to hire a "savior" who is highly regarded in the industry. The candidate has very strong negotiating leverage, and the people doing the hiring are so in love that they can’t imagine that the terms of the severance clause will ever really be called into play.