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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Sunday, October 09, 2005

I’LL SEE YOUR UNBELIEVABLE
AND RAISE YOU AN INCONCEIVABLE


It’s “unbelievable.” They’re “stunned” and “dismayed and “bewildered,” say a bunch of university presidents asked by the Washington Post to comment on American University President Benjamin Ladner.

“He should be gone,” University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala tells the newspaper. Other university presidents “scoffed at the notion that a president has to spend tens of thousands of dollars to raise money. ‘My experience is that the truly wealthy philanthropists don't want you to spend money like that,’ said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity University in Washington. ‘I took a big donor to lunch the other day at Union Station. That's where she wanted to go.’”

Above all, it’s a values thing. “Administrators also say that they must view themselves as role models for students and that Ladner's lifestyle does not set a good tone. ‘It's a values issue as much as anything else,’ McGuire said. ‘We have to reflect values that we expect our children to learn.’”

In short, “the situation at American is not reflective of universities in general and would not happen at their schools.”




No one wishes this were so in general more than UD, who would like nothing more than to close up shop here at University Diaries because all American universities are ethically run to the highest intellectual standards. But while she admires the particular university presidents described in the Post piece, she thinks a little context is in order.

Here’s a recent New York Times story, for instance, that finds presidential behavior at many of our universities fully as “inconceivable” as the interviewed presidents find Ben Ladner:




IVORY TOWER EXECUTIVE SUITE
GETS C.E.O.-LEVEL SALARIES

By SAM DILLON


The earnings of many top university presidents are spiraling up toward $1 million a year, according to an annual survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education, rising far more quickly than faculty salaries.

Forty-two presidents of private universities were paid $500,000 or more in the 2003 fiscal year, the most recent for which figures are available, compared with 27 presidents the previous year. Just two earned half a million in 1994.

The highest-paid private university president, William R. Brody of Johns Hopkins University, earned $897,786 in university compensation, not counting at least $100,000 in annual pay for membership on several corporate boards.

At least five other university presidents earned more than $800,000, including Judith Rodin, who has since left the presidency of the University of Pennsylvania, and Gordon Gee, the chancellor of Vanderbilt. They received the second- and third-highest compensation packages.

The presidents of public universities, too, are earning salaries that would have been inconceivable a few years back, although they remain lower than on private campuses. At public universities, 17 presidents earn more than $500,000, compared with 12 last year and 6 the year before that.

Mark A. Emmert of the University of Washington is the highest-paid public university president, earning $762,000 this academic year. Carl V. Patton of Georgia State, who receives $722,350, and Mary Sue Coleman of the University of Michigan, who receives $677,500, rank second and third.

"These huge salaries feed into the ongoing corporatization of the academy," said Roger Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, who earned about $120,000 a year when he was president of the State University of New York at New Paltz during the last decade. "Universities do not exist to make money but to educate our students and citizens, a role that is central to our democratic society. We send the wrong message when we transmogrify our campus presidents into C.E.O.'s."

The Chronicle based its listings of private university presidents on the most recently available university federal tax filings, for the 2002-2003 fiscal year. It collected its data on public university presidents by conducting telephone interviews with officials at 131 public research universities and colleges, said Julianne Basinger, who compiled this year's special section. The figures for public university presidents reflect their current compensation, she said.

The median compensation for presidents of private research universities rose to $459,643 in 2003 from $314,944 in 1999, or 46 percent, The Chronicle reported.

Several members of university boards said their presidents deserve the compensation because their responsibilities are increasingly complex, with oversight of thousands of employees, as well as vast research budgets and fund-raising campaigns. Dr. Brody of Johns Hopkins, who has a medical degree and a doctorate in engineering, manages Maryland's largest private work force, with 45,000 employees, and the largest research budget of any American university, more than $1 billion.

"He deserves his compensation," Raymond A. Mason, chairman of the Johns Hopkins board, said in a statement.

But the rising salaries of presidents appear to be opening a social and financial breach with professors. The average compensation for full professors at public and private universities last year was about $100,000, Dr. Bowen said.

The rising presidential salaries at public universities come as many legislatures have slashed their states' higher education budgets. Public four-year colleges raised tuition on average 14 percent last year and 10 percent this year, according to the College Board.

Still, trustees at public universities say that to attract talented leaders they must compete with the private universities. The University of Washington Board of Regents enticed Dr. Emmert to leave the chancellorship of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he was paid $590,000, by matching that figure and adding a $160,000 one-time incentive to move, Jeff Brotman, the chairman of Costco who is the president of the board of regents, said in an interview.

"We think we got tremendous value," Mr. Brotman said. "It's like going into Costco and you see a bottle of Dom Perignon for $90. That's a great value, but it's not cheap."

At many universities, the most highly compensated official is not the president. At Duke in the 2003 fiscal year, for instance, Nannerl O. Keohane, who was the president then, received $528,622 in total compensation, while Mike Krzyzewski, the basketball coach, received $853,099.

The highest-paid person in American academic life, according to The Chronicle, was Maurice Samuels, who received $35.1 million, including a bonus of $14.5 million for reaching investment goals, as senior vice president of the Harvard Management Company, which manages Harvard University's $22.6 billion endowment [UD Update: Citing too low a salary, Samuels has since left Harvard.] . Lawrence H. Summers, the Harvard University president, received $529,397 in total compensation.

Two top educators at Boston University made the list of highest-paid presidents for the 2002-2003 year. Jon Westling, who left the Boston University presidency in July 2002, received $700,626 in total compensation. John R. Silber, the chancellor who had served as president from 1971 through 1996 and who assumed the duties but not the formal title of president when Dr. Westling stepped down, received $808,677 in total compensation during the same fiscal year.

A year later, in October 2003, Boston University paid $1.8 million to Daniel S. Goldin, a former NASA administrator, to walk away from his contract as university president the day before he was to assume the duties from Dr. Silber.