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November 19, 2008, 10:13 AM ET
Suffolk President's Pay Angers Some
Some students, faculty, and staff members at Suffolk University are angry about President David J. Sargent’s $2.8-million salary, The Boston Globe reports. Sargent’s salary is the highest in the nation, according to The Chronicle’s latest executive-compensation survey. As the Globe tells it:
When Suffolk University sophomore Priscilla Santana read the news yesterday, she immediately dashed off an incredulous text message to a classmate, punctuating her note with a barrage of exclamation points. Approximately one for each zero in her college president’s $2.8 million salary last year.
“Neither of us could believe it,” Santana, a Roslindale native, said yesterday morning on the Beacon Hill campus. “The highest in the country, here at Suffolk? It doesn’t make much sense.”
Many Suffolk students, staff, and faculty voiced similar skepticism yesterday over David J. Sargent’s hefty pay package, which topped The Chronicle of Higher Education’s latest survey of college presidents’ wages and benefits. While one-time payments, deferred until Sargent retires, make up a substantial majority of his earnings, many students criticized the bonuses as irresponsible and extravagant.
“That would explain our tuition,” said Joe Curley, a sophomore from New Jersey who is paying the private university almost $26,000 in tuition, 7 percent more than last year. “My parents are not happy about this, not happy at all.”
John Nucci, the university’s vice president for external affairs, told the Globe that the pay hike was justified and, in fact, long overdue: “He was embarrassingly underpaid for a half-century, and this is a one-time correction to that situation.”
But Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability, told the newspaper that a pay package of that size is unheard of:
“Two million is just out of whack, I don’t care if he had been underpaid for 30 or 40 years,” said Richard Vedder, who directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. “Why should a university receive a tax deduction to fund a $2 million payout to its president?”
On Hiring is The Chronicle's blog about the ins and outs of college hiring, with articles and advice from around the Web.
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