… and, as always, it’s based on greed and invidiousness rather than a sense of duty to the institution.
The university’s president refuses a pay cut, because “My compensation ranks 93 out of 151 public universities for which we have data for faculty and presidents,” Fogel said. “I think that should be well understood…”
Et alors? And if he were 151st? Why is a university president keeping score of this? Are his children in tatters? The man’s been rewarding other administrators, too, even as he’s cutting lecturers and stripping the school of other goods.
The governor has taken note of Fogel’s score-keeping ways.
… While state lawmakers, including Gov. Jim Douglas, have agreed to a 5 percent cut in salary due to tough economic times, Fogel refuses.
Douglas commented on Fogel’s refusal to take a pay cut Thursday in Montpelier. “I think I did the right thing. My team did. The judiciary did. It’s important to make some tough decisions in challenging times. I don’t want to tell him what to do, but I’m sure he’ll look at all the options,” Douglas said Thursday.
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Update: Far as UD can make out, Fogel’s salary is around $500,000 (I assume this doesn’t include the many perks university presidents get).
President Fogel needs to make an effort to think about his compensation in the same terms he’s asked his students to adopt by way of thinking about their lives. Do not follow the crowd. Do not judge your worth in extrinsic terms; try thinking in intrinsic terms. Do not be a cynic, as Oscar Wilde said, who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And so on and so on.
I would ask President Fogel to think about the actuality of what he and his university have been telling students – teaching students – for generations.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:32PM
chutzpah. y’know the place could function just fine without a president. there are plenty of vps and deans….
February 27th, 2009 at 2:49PM
As something of an old-school Yankee with old-school Yankee attitudes toward public finance, all I can say to Mr. Fogel is what the governor and the Vermont legislature probably wanted to say: "You’re not from around here, are you."
February 27th, 2009 at 4:26PM
I hold the same position on this as on last Friday’s discussion regarding Professor Babb. It would be commendably selfless if President Fogel voluntarily accepted pay cut. However, he has no obligation to do so and, generally, criticism of him for not doing so is misplaced. To the extent you believe he’s overpaid, he’s been overpaid since he began this job and criticism is better directed at the people who agreed to pay this salary in the first instance.
All that said, I think you have a fair point in your update. Rather than cite Oscar Wilde, let’s allow President Fogel speak for himself:
"The University has a living commitment to the ethical foundations of democracy and to values long-associated with the state of Vermont: fairness, social justice, environmental stewardship, openness, independence, lack of pretense and the achievement of practical results."
~President’s Welcome & Governance (http://www.uvm.edu/about_uvm/?Page=president.html)
While I would refrain from criticizing President Fogel’s decision, he should address how his decision accords with the University’s "living commitment" that he’s articulated.
February 27th, 2009 at 5:34PM
"To the extent you believe he’s overpaid, he’s been overpaid since he began this job and criticism is better directed at the people who agreed to pay this salary in the first instance."
This is certainly right, and the original error consisted in the trustees and/or the legislature buying into the salary bubble in the first place. But new occasions teach new duties, and there are two follow-up issues as I see it:
(1) If Mr. Fogel is so tone-deaf to public sentiment and official hypocrisy that he can’t see that he ought to take a pay cut (even if he legally doesn’t have to), then he’s probably equally clueless about a lot of other issues to the extent that he isn’t doing a very good job.
(2) The reason legislatures meet regularly and are regularly replaced is so past errors can be corrected. If I were a Vermont legislator I’d be introducing a bill next week specifying that the salary of the state university’s president may never exceed the salary of the governor, and then I’d present that bill as a model law to be adopted by every state in the union.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:21PM
"I am not going to dispute the numbers," Fogel said. "I understand the enormous anger that people feel about the excessive bonuses given to leaders of failing institutions that have dragged the economy and all of us down and so I understand the anger on campus, but I think the nature of the practice here was very very different and deserves to be better understood. … You’re talking about 21 people over four years and so that very big number comes out to less than $1,000 per person per year," he said.
Yet the bonuses mentioned in the article are for almost 900,000! 21 people x 4 years = 84 bonuses, so his numbers add up to 84,000. That’s less than 1 tenth of the money we’re talking about, which would be more than 10,000 per person per year.