May 21, 2015
Frank Bruni has a very good column on the pay packages of presidents at universities around the country. Bruni points out that many make well over a million dollars a year and some of them make several million a year, when their pension is included.
One aspect to this issue that Bruni neglects to mention is that these pay packages come largely at the public’s expense. In the case of public universities, the school are largely financed with public funds, so the taxpayer involvement is quite direct. However even at a private university like Yale, which Bruni reports gave an $8.5 million going away president to its retiring president Richard Levin, the taxpayers subsidize the cost through its tax exempt status. Insofar as money is given to Yale from high income earners, the tax deduction means that the government is losing more than 40 cents on the dollar.
Clearly there is a failure of governance at these institutions where the boards that control them have little incentive to restrain pay at the top. This is likely the case because there are often personal ties between the boards and the presidents and hey, why wouldn’t they want to give someone else’s money to their friends?
It is striking that pay of these university presidents is not more of an issue at a time when there has been a great effort to highlight the pay and especially the pensions of public sector employees. The deferred pay given to Yale’s former president would be equal to roughly 500 pension years for the retired Detroit municipal employees.
The pay of university presidents should also be an issue in plans to make college free or at least less expensive. If college is to be affordable to students or the public, if taxpayers end up footing the bill, then it will be difficult to support such outlandish pay packages for those at the top. The excessive pay for college presidents does not only directly imply substantial costs, it leads to inflated pay for other top university administrators.
The president of the United States gets $400,000 a year. That seems a reasonable limit for public universities or private ones that benefit from tax exempt status. If a school can’t attract good help for this pay, it is probably not the sort of institution that deserves the public’s support.
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