Deb Wood: Expense account of $24,000, salary of $118,000, and benefit plan of $21, 651. Calling the Class of 2010 "racist" and "sexist" and getting away with it? Priceless.
There are some things money cannot buy. For everything else, there's raising tuition.
Ever wondered how much the administrators make at Scripps or Pomona? Now you can find out! (God willing, they will run the numbers for CMC, HMC, and Pitzer.)
You'll find that Linda R. Scott of the Scripps Board of Trustees makes a whopping $90,875+ and gave a $1,000 to Barack Obama; that Debra Wood of White Party fame has an expense account of $24,000; how much Pomona and Scripps took in and how much they kept.
Hats go off to The Claremont Insider for digging around in the I.R.S. files and listing the compensation packages in plain view for all to see. (I must say that whenever I see those three little letters - I.R.S. - I often run for cover.)
Why do we bring up this high compensation for our administrators? Is it to begrudge their wealth at our expense?
I don't really believe that envy ought to be a part of our politics. I don't hate the rich. Rather, like most Americans and non-Democrats, I'm more fascinated than troubled by their existence.
To quote Abraham Lincoln, "Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built. (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, "Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association" (March 21, 1864), pp. 259-260.)
When a C.E.O. makes a gazillion dollars, I'm one of the first people to applaud him. I know that not all C.E.O.s are guaranteed to make money. In fact, a lot lose their shirts, despite their best efforts.
But it really bugs me when college administrators make barrels full of money because I consider the growth of the administrator class to be against the interests of the students' education.
Moreover, I must seriously wonder at any institution that pays its administrators so highly. Might these administrators be inclined to harass the students and wield their power capriciously? After all, they do not suffer the consequences, nor bear the costs for errors in judgment. Witness Dean Wood.
It's no coincidence that the number of bias incidents seem to go up at the same rate as the number of administrators. Maybe they just get bored and need something to do.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Claremont Insider Finds Out How Much Our Administrators Make
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5 comments:
Why does it bother you that college administrators are paid high salaries? How does it detract from the student's education?
Unless you're a closet-Big Govt. conservative, you would see that individuals in the labor market for education are paid the market rate, regardless of govt. interference. Based on your assumption that high administrator salaries are bad for the student, high CEO salaries in a corporation are bad for consumers. Does that make any sense? No. Because the colleges, like any other private entity compete for the best resources (labor) to produce the best service. And this doesn't take place because of your Straussian virtue, but because of the competition in the market.
Further, you attack highly compensated administrators, when the hero of your blog, Larry Arnn, is one of the higest paid presidents. Does that take away from the quality of education at Hillsdale?
Here's how it detracts, anonymous.
1) College isn't a free market. The millions of dollars in aid money that the federal and state govt provides should persuade you of that. In a normal free market, costs wouldn't be rising triple of what inflation is.
2) In a free market a la Hayek, creative destructive guarantees that those colleges that rise their costs too rapidly would be destroyed. (I'm also not a Straussian, by the way. Check with Dan O'Toole on that front.)
3) Hillsdale does not accept any money from the federal govt. None. Arnn is very highly paid because he produces a serious product. He is very akin to the CEO model you were talking about.
1. Agreed, but market forces incorporate all intervention and distortions. Regardless of federal aid, the distorted market still places a market price for college presidents, which still has a function (distorted) to the final produce, i.e. educational service.
1.1 My point is that the salaries being paid are not arbitrary but functions of the market, however distorted it may be, with whatever degree of market power if may give colleges.
1.2 If it does indeed detract, then I assume you would advocate some sort of legislation to cap it? We know how that always ends up.
2. Once again, agreed. But they before colleges, or any individual entity is wiped out of the market, it corrects itself. Take financial aid for example. Colleges compete for the best students through several merit based financial aid packages. Financial aid, is after all, a lower price for the same service.
3. I never doubted Mr. Arnn's sincerity and competence. Hillsdale are paying his price for a reason. Regardless of federal money, private institutions compete with each other for the best administrators, which brings us to their compensation.
4. You still haven't established how that detracts from the student. You're simply showing that it isn't a free market, which I obviously agree with.
5. We can't discuss college tuition without considering Mr. Sowell's arguments. In a Free to Choose episode on education, Sowell and Friedman correctly pointed our that universities have become centers for research and not education. They exist for the professors. I'm sure you and I agree that the free market would never produce such a result. At the same time, this situation is a reality. So administrators then become more important than the students, because they manage the professors, who based on Sowell/Friedman, the institution services.
unfortunately college costs seems to always rise faster than inflation. The reason: no incentive to stop the spending. Again, whatever cost overruns they might have can be made up through tuition increases (which can then be made up to students a bit by more financial aid. One rich donor giving a big gift could see us through). Which is not so bad if your college has a lot of very rich donors (CMC is helped by having probably more than our fair share considering our age and amount of alumni). Also, does it take special skills to be a college administrator or could anybody really do the job? I think Mr. Faranda is special, but is Deb Wood? Doubt it. Unlike a CEO that is in charge of adding value to the company to increase the wealth of shareholders (small poor people like ME!, for one), obviously educational institutions are not for profit. So any increase in pay other than inflationary is really going to have to be passed onto the students, and few are better off for it.
Our universities have become centers for research and professors and not education, which unfortunately is a very bad thing for the undergrad's POV. (read Murray Sperber's Beer and Circus for how much universities care much more about their athletics for one more than education. And athletics is a huge money suck except for schools big enough to have televised college football). Luckily, there are still some liberal arts colleges left where students can actually get a personalized education and not big box, degree-mill ho-hum crap. Obviously I am very passionate about this and I realize that research universities need to exist as they produce a lot of new and good innovations. I would just never be an undergrad at one, since they exist for the grad students and profs. CMC does a good job of having quality education and research and I think all the Claremont Colleges receive high marks for striking a good balance there. Big research takes big money, so it isnt worth it to have at claremont, and instead let undergrads at big schools get less education for their buck.
Actually to respond to Charles' final comment, they do get bored and need something to do, with very bad results. This analogy may seem like a stretch, but it is actually very apt. I just got through watching the six part BBC series on the Nazis and how they rose to power. One of the most (in)genius ideas of Hitler was to assign at least two people virtually the same job, with full knowledge of what he was doing. The idea was not to get them to compete with each other to produce a better product but to compete for his favor. Therefore, Hitler always remained in control and his subordinates had to try to please him because they were in competition for their jobs until the very end. Access to Hitler was the most important thing. We see the same patterns in overloaded college administrations. Perhaps someone has to make a crazy accusation to prove their ho-hum department with its inflated salary is worth it, and get the president of the college to keep their funding. I am not saying our administrations are like the Nazi power structure, but it is a very interested group management idea to study. The product with bloated budgets and hazily-defined responsibilities? Not always good.
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