Citizen Journalist: At MU, the three As of unfair pay

by Mike Martin

December 11,2009

Mike Martin is a Columbia resident and science journalist, Mike.martin@weeklyscientist.com.

Forget the 3Rs: reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic.

In higher education these days, it's all about the 3As: Athletics, Administration and academics, which is so far down on the compensation list it barely rates mention.

The overpaid coach or senior administrator — even at public institutions such as the University of Missouri — has become a troubling specter on a compensation landscape littered with looting: The Fortune-500 CEO taking an enormous pay package out of a failing enterprise. The bailed-out Wall Street exec granted a multi-million-dollar bonus.

Equally troubling but not widely reported is how this phenomenon has trickled into the public sector, where taxes, debt and fees — fixed revenues — rather than variable sales and profits fund spending.

The public sector has constraints that should rein in compensation. But looking in our own backyard, these constraints only apply to the third A, academics — that mission statement core and the reason people go to college in the first place.

MU administrators and athletic officials inhabit an unchecked, sky's-the-limit compensation universe that might soon threaten the very system it supports.

Athletic vs. academic coaches

Compare two types of coaches at MU. Academic advisers annually earn between $26,000 and $44,000; associate and assistant football coaches earn seven to 10 times as much.

On promotion from assistant to associate football coach this year, David Yost saw his salary almost double from $184,090 to $310,000.

Compensation for assistant coaches Craig Kuligowski and Bruce Walker jumped 15 percent from $184,090 to $216,000. Assistant football coaches Cornell Ford and Robert Hill enjoyed similar increases: $182,000 to $214,000 each.

Head Football Coach Gary Pinkel, compensated 10 times higher than his assistants (more $2 million), perhaps felt guilty. "Coach wanted to make sure his assistant coaches were taken care of, to bring them more in line with the average, close to the middle of Big 12 salaries for assistant coaches," said Chad Moller, athletics department spokesman.

Too bad that same standard doesn't apply to academics. The average salary for MU full professors was $111,200 in 2008, nowhere near the middle of the Big 17 — peer universities in surrounding states. In fact, it was third from the bottom.

More troubling: MU associate professors average $75,300, assistant professors, $61,100 — among the lowest salaries in the Big 17.

Surgeon chairman

The skewed priority that athletic coaches and administrators are worth a tremendous premium to professors and researchers is nowhere more apparent than in an unusually large salary increase provided to one of MU's top surgeons this year.

On promotion from general surgeon to surgery chairman at University Hospital, Jerry Rogers, M.D., saw his salary more than double — from $213,200 last year to $547,000. The implication is that Rogers' role as an administrator is worth more than twice his role as a surgeon, which was actually under-compensated at $213K given his rare and valuable skills.

In a world of reasonable priorities, if Rogers is worth $547,000 as a department chairperson, he is worth at least $500,000 as a surgeon. And yet, his compensation was 60 percent less in that role.

Skewed priorities

Following bad news about student costs and academic budgets, MU curators this year offered system president Gary Forsee a 25 percent "performance stipend": $100,000 to his $400,000 salary.

Forsee turned it down, but the mere offer — to a former CEO already worth millions — illustrates a values problem: a whopping pay increase for the chief in the midst of budget cuts for almost everyone else.

Other MU administrators didn't refuse hefty hikes. General Counsel Steve Owens' salary jumped 15 percent from $338,000 to $375,000. David Russell went from being one type of administrator — chief of staff — to another type of administrator — senior associate vice president — for a 12 percent salary boost: $150,249 to $168,000.

MU administrators also added to their own and hired E-learning and Distance Education Director John March at $125,000 — 10 percent more than the average full professor — and his assistant, Christa Weisbrook, at $96,000.

Because 19 MU administrators are making more in 2009 than they did in 2008, how can times be so tough for everyone else? Or are times tough for everyone else partly because administrators keep raising their own pay?

The wrong jobs

MU athletes make nothing. And the people behind MU's core mission — academics — are perennially at the compensation bottom.

Nonetheless, what do we always hear when Gary Pinkel gets another cool million after an OK season or when MU seeks a new vice-president, chairman or director?

It's the same thing we heard from the Columbia School Board when it hiked former Superintendent Phyllis Chase’s pay 20 percent and from City Manager Bill Watkins when he brought in former City and Light Director Kraig Kahler at a 20-percent premium to predecessor Dan Dasho.

"We have to pay the best to get the best," we hear. "It's just so competitive out there."

When Steve Jobs returned to a flailing Apple Computer, he took a $1-per-year salary; he preferred to let the marketplace — not administrators, board members or cronies — determine the rest.

The man who gave us the iPhone, iPod and the Mac computer — some of the most innovative and competitive products on the market today — took only $1 per year.

Wonder why so many Columbia institutions struggle to innovate? As Steve Jobs could tell them, they’re over-compensating the wrong jobs.