College presidents’ pay out of whack with reality

Because more than 10 percent of us are unemployed, as many as a fourth of our homes are in foreclosure, savings have been ravaged by falling markets and near-zero interest rates, the dollar’s value is tanking and inflation is beginning to spread like pond scum, we are, understandably, increasingly concerned with the disproportionate salaries paid to entertainers, professional athletes, bankers, investment counselors, politicians and other non-productive persons.

Well, now it seems appropriate to take a look at another category: college presidents.

In general, the chief executives of colleges and universities are paid unjustified, undeserved and unneeded salaries, along with extraordinarily generous benefits packages. Salaries in the mid- to high-six-figure range are common and are often matched by benefits (homes, cars, medical care, retirement, etc.) that about double those figures.

That wasteful practice continues in a time when many colleges are making significant upward adjustments to tuition prices, while the students have less and less with which to pay.

This subject has had some appropriate publicity in recent days, when news sources began reporting on the pending retirement of Carl Kuttler, president of the St. Petersburg College. (Did you know that there is such an institution?)

According to one such report, Kuttler’s 2009 total cash-income will be about $465,000 in 2009, and that doesn’t include the value of his very significant, associated benefits. That clearly overly-generous remuneration package, for a job at a minor college, is not, however, what made Kuttler’s story newsworthy. His infamy reportedly seems to stem from his having requested more than a half-million dollars for unused sick days, a sabbatical not taken, a car that he believes he’s owed and 18 months of time remaining on his contract.

Kuttler’s not the only university manager that is paid far more than they are worth. Look, for example, at another local administrator, Judy Genshaft, of the only slightly better-known, University of South (or is that “Southern?) Florida. Genshaft was recently reported to have been awarded a $93,525 performance bonus for her “work” in the past year. When added to her base pay of $395,000, that brings her yearly take to nearly $500,000 (plus very significant and costly benefits).

Now, I am not on some sort of vendetta against college presidents, but am instead only attempting to point out how careless we have become in paying significantly unjustified salaries to persons in rather routine and unproductive jobs. Bankers, investment houses, stock brokers, CEOs and others are rather continually in the news, so we’re generally aware of a pressing need to get their pay scales in line with reality. College presidents came into the news only recently, so it seems an appropriate time to focus, however briefly, on them.

Of course, college administrators (e.g., boards of trustees, presidents, etc.) will be quick to attempt to defend their long-enjoyed, overly generous pay packages. They will, for example, point out the size of the budgets for which they are responsible; the large numbers of persons involved with their institutions; the weighty responsibilities of caring for their students; and, especially, the signal importance of their work to the nation’s welfare. All that may be fair and proper, but their fat-cat remunerations are still far out of whack with reality. Let’s look, for example, at a reasonably comparable line of work: the U.S. military.

Military officers often handle budgets several times the size of those at either USF or St. Pete College; have responsibilities involving as many or more persons; are unarguably performing work vital to our national welfare; and, in addition, often put their lives on the line in the performance of their duties. Air Force colonels and Navy captains regularly manage procurement offices with budgets larger than those of most colleges, yet those officers are paid only around $126,000 a year (Genshaft’s gross is three times that amount). A top (4-star) Army general, with responsibilities that make President Kuttler’s shrink to insignificance, is paid around $216,000, while Kuttler raked in more than twice that amount.

Few of those military officers, who may work more than 70 hours a week without overtime pay, and who are not paid for unused sick time, sabbaticals nor promised motor vehicles, ever complain that they are underpaid. How then, can we tolerate, let alone support, the bonuses, salaries and lucrative benefits packages heaped on university administrators, with far less demanding jobs?

Our nation is in the midst of an economic crisis, which seems to be as mismanaged as was the environment that permitted the crisis to develop. It seems to me that, in order to work our way out of the deepening hole visible in the near future, this nation needs to really tighten its economic “belt.

I don’t at all propose government controls to level all salaries and wages, but I do believe that glaring excesses, such as those we’ve focused on today, need attention. There is, for example, no possible excuse for paying someone in a cushy job in an unknown university several times what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military is paid – especially when it could be argued that even many admirals are overpaid for what they actually do.

That tired excuse used by our whining teenagers (“but everyone’s doing it”), can no longer be tolerated when employed by those who cavalierly set or approve remuneration packages for college presidents.

Of Cabbages and Kings is a regular feature of this paper. The author welcomes rational and pertinent comment, which may be sent to him at [email protected].