Salaries Aren't the Problem

College presidents make top dollar, but tuition hikes are the real enemy.

By Ryan Werder, University of Michigan
Thursday December 15, 2005

My tuition at the University of Michigan went up 12.3% over the summer. My university president’s salary went up 3.5%. Frankly, I like her deal more. U Mich President Mary Sue Coleman is now earning $724,604 a year including salary and benefits. That makes her the highest paid public university president in the country. Unlike some of my fellow students, I don’t hold it against her.

At a time when state legislatures across the country, including Michigan’s, are annually slashing public funding for higher education, it is tempting to point a finger at the most conspicuous figures of our universities: the presidents. We see their high salaries (University of Delaware President David Roselle makes $720,000 and University of Texas President Mark Yudof makes $693,677) and blame our own tuition woes on them. Ironically, they are the people who are fighting hardest to lower tuition.

Coleman, for one, has lobbied endlessly against the hike in tuition. In fact, for the 2004-05 year she even turned down a salary increase in the face of the rising price of schooling, and this year she gave a $500,000 donation to the University. I’m not suggesting that Coleman’s actions are the norm. But regardless of how any university’s chief responds, the fact remains that the recent outcry against presidents’ salaries is misplaced.

We can’t look at public university presidents’ salaries in a void. At a time when so many private university presidents are in the million-dollar club, it is crucial to retain high-caliber leaders. According to the Economics of Education Review, there is already a significant brain-drain from state universities to private institutions regarding professors. Losing talented heads of universities might be an even more devastating blow.

These people are often the allies of progressive students on issues like tuition and defending affirmative action. It’s time we look to our state capitols and place the blame where it truly lies: at the feet of our state legislatures.

Taking the fight where it is most needed:

As Charles B. Hoslet, UW-Madison’s director of state relations, said recently, “Higher ed is top on the [state legislators’] ‘nice to do’ list, but not on the ‘need to do’ list.” It simply isn’t worth getting angry at the Regents of Universities for adding thousands of dollars to a president’s salary when the real problem is that states are adding thousands of dollars of burden to every student and their family.

Among the worst suffering state university programs as of 2002 are Iowa, which endured cuts of 20% in higher education spending, and Mississippi, which saw cuts of 18%. Lawmakers justify pillaging state funding of schools by reasoning that they get funding elsewhere. Hospital fees, student tuition, federal government research, etc., comprise the majority of Michigan’s budget, but it is the 10% that the state provides that is so vital to keeping tuition down. A graph produced in the most recent financial report for the University of Michigan shows a directly inverse relationship between the amount of base state appropriations and the increase in tuition.

Students should join their school presidents in fighting for affordable education. For all the campus activists out there, this is a cause that could rally students like few others. As James Carville famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” For students there are differing positions on Iraq, differing positions on the environment, differing positions on most everything, really—but not tuition. You’ll be hard pressed to find a single peer in favor of paying more for their education.

A survey conducted by the Public Education Network found that the majority of Americans are at least “somewhat willing” to pay higher taxes to improve public education in America. So we can turn to a majority of Americans for support. The way to frame the issue is to focus on the fact that there are too many potential students right now who are unable to afford college.

The most essential purpose of state universities is to provide affordable and quality education. The University of Michigan and many other state universities are rapidly becoming unaffordable. We can, and we must, focus our peers’ attention on the fact that rising tuition is not unavoidable. We can reverse the trend. The salaries of our universities’ presidents aren’t the issue. It’s time to focus on state funding and make college affordable again.

 
Ryan Werder is the founder and former editor of the Michigan Independent, a Campus Progress sponsored publication.