I had taken a hiatus from blogging as I have worked with Will Nielsen- my web development friend to improve the site. Hopefully, I will have the new site up and running before 2008. Also, I was chosen (as any Calvinist believes) for a full line-by-line 2006 tax audit by the IRS. That was a lot of fun. It consumed some of my time that I would be writing blogs and reading.
One subject that has received some media attention lately is the escalating salaries of college administrators. I have written about the disparity in CEO and worker pay before. This is a problem in corporate America.
The companies that seem to do well on many levels have some reasonable strategy for creating stakeholder value- being good stewards over the money and people that have been entrusted to them. Many of these stewardship-minded companies have a written policy that the CEO will not earn more than 40 times the salary of the average worker or something to that effect. The average CEO earns 364 times the salary of the average worker.
Although there is public outrage over the greedy actions of corporate executives, the wealth generated usually has some tie to profitability of that corporation. This is not the case in the halls of academia. There was an article written in World magazine recently about the escalation in pay for college presidents. The average compensation for a college president was over $400,000 in 2006-2007. That figure doesn't seem too outrageous.
But the salaries are escalating fast. Many public university presidents are receiving over $700,000 per year in salaries and bonuses. I will grant that this is not an easy job and that there is probably a great need to pay these men and women well. But doesn't it seem excessive to pay someone over $700,000 per year when the incomes are being supported by taxpayers/state funding?
The President of the United States only makes $400,000 per year. Senators and Congressmen/women bring home about $200,000 per year.
Over 81 presidents of private universities earned $500,000 or more in 2006. Where is the equal outrage for the excessive pay of college presidents that the media gives to CEOs and ministers?For His Glory,
Ashley Hodge
