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College presidents' pay soars

Brittany Anas, Daily Camera

Published February 5, 2007 at midnight

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The University of Colorado will step into a competitive market when it begins searching for its next president - one in which salaries are soaring to new highs, and there are dozens of open positions nationwide.

Higher-education experts say the increasing complexity of the top job is driving up compensation packages for university presidents, whose pay typically falls between that of a tenured professor and a Division 1 football coach.

CU's Hank Brown announced last month that he will step down in February 2008, giving the school ample time to conduct a nationwide search.

Critics of the increasing presidential pay scale, though, are concerned it distracts universities from their academic missions.

The number of public-university presidents earning $500,000 or more has nearly doubled over the past year, from 23 to 42, according to a survey published in November by the Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2001, only a half-dozen university presidents earned salaries that reached the half-million mark.

"It shouldn't be about the money; it should be about the service," said Roger Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors. "People who want to be president should want to serve the academy. Money can be a major distraction."

Bowen said he's concerned that when universities begin to mimic the corporate world, presidents and governing boards become comparable to CEOs, professors to intellectual laborers and students to customers.

Also, states' shrinking financial support of higher education is causing presidents to spend more time fundraising, he said.

"They become less and less attentive to the primary mission of the campus: intellectual life," Bowen said.

When he left his post as president of State University of New York at New Paltz in 2001, his salary was about $120,000, he said.

The median compensation for leaders of public research universities and public college systems in 2006 was $374,846, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education report. That's 4.1 percent higher than in 2005.

A decade ago, CU's 19th president, John Buechner, earned a $215,000 base salary.

CU regents in May named Brown the school's permanent president and approved his $360,000 salary and a $47,000 annual housing allowance.

Regent Steve Bosley said Brown wouldn't accept a higher salary. Brown also turned down a car allowance and has kept personal expenses low.

Bosley, who has served on two CU presidential search committees, said the university wants to find a president with strong fundraising skills and a commitment to running a school that has transparent policies and procedures, and holds employees accountable.

A base salary in the range of $300,000 to $400,000 is now considered to be on the lower end of the pay scale,said Claire Van Ummersen, vice president of the American Council on Education, based in Washington, D.C.

Van Ummersen said pay is rising because today's university presidents have wide-ranging skills: academic backgrounds, understanding the culture of academia, fundraising abilities, managing budgets that reach into the billions and overseeing multi-campus systems that are comparable to cities.