UNC Chancellor Raises Not Performance-Based | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Kari Travis, who is Social Media Specialist for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

Board of Governors raised salaries for seven chancellors in addition to pay hike granted by NCGA

    Pay increases that were awarded last week to seven UNC system chancellors reflect a national trend that tends to inflate salaries for public higher-education administrators, an expert on college affordability said.

    The UNC Board of Governors on July 29 voted to raise chancellor pay for the second time within nine months, a decision that system President Margaret Spellings said will move university leaders into pay ranges comparable to those of peer institutions.

    But such "market" assessments for university pay makes "competitive pay rates" excessive, Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, told Carolina Journal.

    Vedder, who from 2005-06 served on the Commission on the Future of Higher Education - which Spellings headed during her time as U.S. secretary of education in the George W. Bush administration - said universities' habit of bolstering salaries in order to compete with other schools has evolved into a type of arms race between institutions across the country.

    "What [universities] think 'competitive salaries' of peer institutions are is sometimes an arbitrary number that they pick to justify the actions that they want to take," Vedder said. "And in general ... although there's been talk of austerity in higher education ... the salaries of high-level university administrators have been rising."

    Vedder also pointed to padded employment contracts as another problem in most university systems, since many include additional perks and payouts for university chancellors and presidents.

    "I think it erodes confidence in public universities," Vedder said. "It makes people wonder why we give special privileges to universities, why we subsidize universities rather than tax them. They are supposed to be tax-exempt organizations - like charities and so forth, where the people [in leadership] are supposed to live reasonably comfortable lives, but not get extremely wealthy doing that."

    The increases most recently agreed upon by the BOG range from 1.5 percent to 16.1 percent, with nine of the university's chancellors receiving an across-the-board state employee pay raise of 1.5 percent - a provision included in this year's state budget - and the remaining seven collecting additional pay boosts starting at less than 1 percent and stretching to as much as 14.63 percent.

    "This board has for a couple of years now been working to get competitive salary ranges for each of the chancellors, and this was the next step in that journey - and we are nearly there," Spellings told reporters following the board meeting.


UNC President Margaret Spellings is working with university administrators and state lawmakers to develop a strategic plan for the system that in the future will include performance-based pay raises for chancellors. (CJ photo by Kari Travis)

    UNC-Charlotte Chancellor Philip Dubois will see the largest overall pay increase with a raise of $56,688, bumping his current annual salary from $387,500 to $450,000. N.C. State University Chancellor Randy Woodson will see $18,526 added to his salary of $590,000, bringing him to a total of $617,376 annually, and UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt will receive the third-largest pay hike of $17,898, raising her annual salary from $578,550 to $596,448.

    East Carolina University Chancellor Cecil Staton, who was appointed by the board in late April, is the only UNC chancellor who will see no pay increase. Staton's annual salary is set at $450,000, the lower end of his market range, according to a pay chart provided by the board.

    All salary increases will kick in this year, Spellings said.

    "Moving forward, we're going to be looking at performance increases," said board Chairman Lou Bissette. "But for now, you get everybody at least to the bottom part of the pay scale."

    Performance-based raises would be a good alternative to market-based pay, but putting such a system in place is easier said than done, Vedder said.

    UNC board member Marty Kotis, who voted in support of the increases, said that job accountability and level of skill must still be scrutinized as the university moves forward.

    "You want to make sure you have people in those positions that are worth that money," Kotis told CJ.

    Vedder agreed, saying UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Greensboro, and East Carolina offer some of the most bloated chancellor salaries in the UNC system.

    "We're making payments beyond the amount needed to keep a person on the job," he said, referencing the board's decision to increase pay twice within a 12-month period.

    But discussions about chancellor pay can be complicated, said Rep. John Fraley, R-Iredell, who chairs the state House Committee on Education-Universities.

    "You can't discount what market pricing is in order to hire and keep the quality of people that we would like in those jobs," Fraley said. "So I do think that you have to take that into consideration."

   

    "I happen to think that it's important to have very capable and qualified people in these positions that are running large institutions, and that are responsible for a lot of students," he added. "It's just not an easy job. And so there's a price to pay for people that are talented and capable of doing that."

    Spellings is developing strategy for the future of the university that ultimately will see a plan for merit-based pay fall into place, but UNC is far from reaching that point, he said.

    Fraley also noted that, while questions about university pay remain complicated, the BOG has - unlike past actions to increase chancellor salaries - taken care to keep the public informed throughout the process.

    Board members voted during a closed session meeting last October to raise chancellor salaries substantially, inciting questions about a lack of transparency. Those issues have now been dealt with and resolved, Bissette said.

    The BOG debated last week's pay increase for one hour in closed session before returning to open session for its vote, he added.

    "We learned a lot of lessons last year, and I think that this board now is moving toward more transparency in just about everything we do," Bissette said, referencing the body's decision to hold public comment sessions and to broadcast its meetings live via webcast. "We determined that we didn't do it correctly last year, but we think we did this year."