The Oregonian on Sunday told a compelling story about Paul Risser, now ex-president of Oregon State
University. Risser is leaving OSU after finding a job in his home state of Oklahoma, one that pays 66 percent more than his OSU salary.
Both the OSU president and University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer receive salaries of more than $150,000 per year, with $20,000 expense accounts. They have their own homes, given gratis, as a perquisite for serving as a university president. Even with all this, Risser and Frohnmayer have been the two lowest-paid university presidents in the West.
We would like to say that the salaries of presidents and upper-lever administrators here should be raised, especially when low pay could lead to an administrative brain drain. But in good conscience, we can’t. We can’t because professors and faculty are chronically underpaid at the same time as a top-heavy bureaucracy continues to add positions.
The average University professor’s salary is $62,000 per year, a figure that is skewed when law school salaries are taken into account. And professors don’t get free housing or expense accounts.
By way of comparison, professors throughout the American Association of Universities make an average of $77,000.
We find it disturbing that although we will be paying higher tuition bills beginning winter term because of the state’s budget crisis, the University sees no need to trim the fat of the upper administration.
It is also disheartening for us to realize that this bureaucracy is not set up to serve the students, who pay administrators’ paychecks. How many people do we need for marketing, communications, public relations and outreach, anyway? Apparently, according to the University, we need a whole division filled with them.
And then there’s Student Affairs Vice President Anne Leavitt, whose department students deal with every day, as it encompasses the EMU, University Housing, the University Health Center, the Registrar, Academic Advising and the Office of Student Life. Of the people she oversees, one is an “associate vice president” and one is a “vice provost.” The vice president of University Advancement boasts 15 direct personnel — half of them calling themselves vice president.
When budgets are tight, having a seemingly endless parade of officers of administration is untenable. While the University may need some marketing personnel, those people cannot be more important and more numerous than the administrators dealing with students. As soon as the proliferation of administrators is reined in and faculty salaries are increased, we’ll be concerned about the top administrator’s pay.