During the past couple of weeks, the Daily Forty-Niner has called out California State University Chancellor Charles Reed for doing us students dirty. He answered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s call to return more than $31 million at a time our system hurts for cash.
We face enrollment caps, higher tuitions, larger class sizes, fewer courses and tougher admission requirements. At the same time, Reed gives up to 19 percent pay raises to starving CSU vice presidents and hires a bunch more. Times are tough and maybe they need the dough to avoid the corporate welfare lines.
Reed essentially stood in front of his office and said he felt our pain. He gets paid $421,500 per year to run an education system, a threshold of pain none of us can imagine. Comparatively, the president of the United States earns $400,000, but then he only has to run a country.
Wouldn’t it be great if somehow university presidents could help students through tough economic times? Wait a minute; some have! A few of the highest paid university presidents in the country are giving back to their respective universities, according to The New York Times.
The chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis will take a 5 percent cut from his base salary. Granted that salary is about $560,000, making what CSU leaders earn seem paltry by comparison.
Similarly, the president of the University of Washington relinquished a pay raise and the president of Washington State University will take a $100,000 cut.
The actions taken by those starving administrators are commendable. They do not have to return one red cent, yet they each volunteered to give back by taking less. Those leaders are backing students with their own wallets, making CSU administrators appear unsympathetic.
While university presidents in a few other public systems might earn more, CSU presidents and executives can hardly cry broke. The combined salaries of our 23 campus presidents consume approximately $6.7 million per year, averaging roughly $292,000, according to the CSU Executive Compensation Summary for 2007-2008.
The highest paid president in our system is Warren Baker at CSU San Luis Obispo, who manages on a meager $328,209. Barely edging over the national university presidential poverty line is William Eisenhardt at the CSU Maritime Academy, squeezing by on a lowly $258,680 worth of crumbs. CSULB’s own Pres. F. King Alexander — third highest on the list — subsists on $320,329.
To help them through tough times, CSU presidents get either free campus-provided housing or a $50,000 to $60,000 housing allowance. To keep from having to rely on public transportation, system execs are given university cars — not the little electric campus utility carts — or $1,000-per-month gas cards.
Add in other perks like retirement packages and it’s easy to empathize with the neediness of being a CSU administrator fallen on hard times.
Of course, it might be unfair to whine about what CSU executives earn, given that many could probably earn much more in the private sector. We don’t doubt that innovative leaders deserve to be paid equitably in relation to their national peers. In fact, the Chronicle of Higher Education places the national median salary for public university presidents at $427,400.
Since his appointment in 1998, Reed has not adequately represented student affordability concerns. We have seen tuition increases in six of the last seven years, literally doubling the cost of a CSU public education from the 1998 rate of $1,600 per year in undergrad tuition to the current $3,048. During that span, Reed’s salary has nearly doubled from the original $254,000.
The California Master Plan for Higher Education was meant to make college degrees possible for all who qualify academically, regardless of economic status. Many will never realize that dream explicitly because of economic status.
The argument that affordable education is not feasible due to current economic problems doesn’t wash because Reed and the board of trustees were instituting tuition increases even when California was considered the plum of global economies.
From the student perspective, it looks “G‘REED’Y” to hand out pay raises amid a bleak economy. Although it probably won’t happen, we ask our campus executives to refrain from grunting at Reed’s feeding trough like hungry piglets. It’s difficult to have pity for those who enjoy steak and lobster salaries paid for by cutting our ramen noodle rations.
Don’t offer mere lip service with, “CSU is the solution.” Put our money where your mouths are and spurn those pay raises.
Only a campus administrator or their PR hacks would spell “Universities” with a capitol letter. Such arrogance…
“You have to pay the going rate to keep the talent or to obtain it. LB is still cheap compared to other Universities. Give up deigner jeans and Ipods and that should take care of the fee increase.”
This had to have been written by an administrator that got one of these pay raises and has not intention of giving it back. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of the talented ones the writer made reference to, or “he” would have been able to spell “designer jeans and iPods.”
You have to pay the going rate to keep the talent or to obtain it. LB is still cheap compared to other Universities. Give up deigner jeans and Ipods and that should take care of the fee increase.