The Chronicle of Higher Education released the latest compensation data through 2015 on university executives this week. Surprising to no one, their total salaries are at record highs.
According to the report, 58 private university presidents and 9 public university presidents made $1 million-plus in total compensation. Wake Forest University President Nathan O. Hatch took the cake with total earnings of $4 million — $3 million of which came as a bonus for sticking around for a decade. The chair of Wake Forest University’s board of trustees justified Hatch’s compensation by saying that his leadership was “exceptional” — but $4 million seems a bit much, even for “exceptional” work.
Meanwhile, the University of Southern California’s president made nearly $3.2 million and Arizona State University’s president made more than $1.55 million. By comparison, the President of the United States earns just $400,000 in base pay. In fact, the vast majority of world leaders make less money than these university executives.
According to George Mason University Professor Emeritus James Finkelstein, much of the growth in compensation occurs outside of the base pay. Employment packages regularly include extras like retention bonuses, a house or car, cell phone data, and courtside seats at university athletic events. Finkelstein says there’s no research to prove a correlation between a higher salary and better leadership, and yet the salaries continue to climb.
At what point do colleges lose focus on the students they claim to serve? How can university presidents sympathize with the plight of debt-ridden students when they are constantly increasing their corporate-level salaries?
Universities will continue to promote rampant executive salary inflation as long as they face no scrutiny. If these schools can’t reign in the payroll of their upper-level officials, how can they be trusted to keep tuition at a reasonable level for their students?
Brendan Pringle (@BrendanPringle) is a freelance journalist in California. He is a National Journalism Center graduate and formerly served as a development officer for Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch, and an alumnus of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
