The Scandal of College Presidents’ Pay

By Colman McCarthy

Want a cushy job that will make you rich? Become a college president.

And don’t worry if it’s not a brand name school. Even at second and third tier colleges, presidential enrichment programs thrive. At Lafayette, the total compensation in 2003-4 for the president was $603,000. At Grinnell, $508, 000. At Kalamazoo, $542,000. At Bentley, $505,000. Is it right that college presidents are getting paychecks larger than the president of the United States who gets $400,000 a year. And salaries well above cabinet secretaries at $180,000?

In 1995, only four college presidents had salaries and benefits worth $500,000 or more. Now it’s 50, with five topping $1 million. In their ivied fiefdoms, these potentates often get free housing and cars, plus housemaids and drivers. They can pick up pocket change of $10,000 or $20,000 by serving on corporate boards eager to hear wise words from academia.

As detailed by the Chronicle of Higher Education last month, the big men on campus are now the best paid men—or women—on campus.

For parents who’ve been wondering why tuitions keep rising five or six percent a year, and for puzzled students who routinely graduate owing tens of thousands of dollars, and for professors told to be content with $50,000 a year, and for workers who clean the toilets, cook the food and trim the ivy, now they know. Their leaders are raking it in.

Just how fevered the buckraking has become was on display this past fall at American University in Washington. In addition to a pay package of $814,000, President Benjamin Ladner spent university money on catered parties for his family and friends, a personal gourmet chef that he sent to Europe for “personal development” seminars, salaries for gardeners and drivers, $40 bottles of wine, club dues. The tab for three years of this high living came to more than $500,000.

As a long-time adjunct at American, I’ve been aware that large numbers of my students either hold low-paying jobs or are resigned to paying off loans well into their 40s. It was largely student power, fueled by outrage at how their president was living it up, that forced the school’s board of trustees to oust Ladner a few weeks ago. But not without a $950,000 payment and $2.75 million in retirement benefits, which further enraged the students.

Coming to their rescue, perhaps, is Sen. Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The Iowa Republican and hog farmer, whose nose for piggishness regularly leads him to expose Pentagon waste and fraud, has announced an investigation into the trough where Ladner was merrily rooting. The IRS and Justice Department, which have regulatory powers over federally sanctioned non-profits, are also hovering.

What also needs to be eyed is exactly what college presidents do that is so strenuous that they are lavishly paid. Their toil is padded with underlings—provosts, vice-residents, deans, registrars, professors, administrators—who do the work that all but assures campus calm. Would a college go under if its president were to vanish for three or four months?

Only a few do anything so demanding as actually teaching a class, there to be served by TA’s who read and grade papers. Is opening the school year with an inspirational speech on the glories of intellectual inquiry and closing the year with go-forth-into-the-world gab for graduates all that demanding? Or is the strain of dealing with a couple of malcontent profs always mouthing off at faculty senate meetings? Maybe it’s all those muscle aches from shaking the money trees in the forests of foundations and rich alums.

Unlike corporate CEOs who need to keep producing quality goods and services, plus keep shareholders happy, college presidents have little fear that customers—students—will stop coming. The hordes seeking admission are now so large that colleges presidents brag about how many high-GPA kids they reject, not accept.

It’s likely that Senator Grassley, an old pro at these things, will follow the money trail to its source: boards of trustees. Coming mostly from capitalist lairs where they themselves are well-paid or overpaid, it’s natural to throw money at college presidents and get them into the upper income brackets too. Nor it is the trustee’s loot. And how many of them, swooping in and out for occasional board meetings, pay great attention to what’s really going on at a campus beyond how the football or basketball team is doing.

The solution? Diversify the boards: replace captains of industry with parents, students, alums still in hock from college loans, and a couple of janitors and maids. The latter, perhaps by habit, will be ready to clean up the boardroom after the presidents’ salaries are lowered from seven and six figures to five—where most everyone else is.