July 3, 2008

Provost of North Carolina State U. Defends Big Raise for Governor's Wife

The provost of North Carolina State University is defending a pay increase of nearly $80,000 awarded this week to Mary Easley, who is the wife of Gov. Michael F. Easley and has been an “executive in residence” and senior lecturer at the university for three years. The increase, which comes with new responsibilities and a five-year commitment to the institution, brings her pay to $170,000, according to The News & Observer.

“Her salary is within the range of similar management and law faculty and administrators at N.C. State and other universities,” the provost, Larry Nielsen, said in a written statement, the Raleigh newspaper reported.

Ms. Easley previously was a law professor at North Carolina Central University, in Durham. At N.C. State, she has directed the university’s principal speakers program and run a spring-semester course called “Public Law for Public Administrators,” among other duties. Her new responsibilities will include directing and expanding a Public Safety Leadership Initiative, and helping develop partnerships with legal professionals and law schools in the area.

According to the Carolina Journal, which first reported the pay raise, Ms. Easley’s new salary is substantially higher than the university’s average for full professors, and nearly $35,000 more than her husband makes as governor. She rejected the criticism of her new contract, telling the television station WRAL that “negative stories and exaggerations and partial stories go with the territory, and that’s part of public life.” —Charles Huckabee

Comments

1. Sounds like another WVU scandal in the making. No, the fact that Ms. Easley is the govwife has nothing to do with it!

   — Gary    Jul 3, 09:35 AM    #

2. This is nothing new for a lady who has been spending state monies without a conscience for a while now… her 2 recent trips to Europe cost the taxpayers $109,000, during which she hit the best restaurants and museums, stayed in the finest hotels, etc. Check out: http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1126322.html

   She should be in a cell right along with some of North Carolina’s finest: Jim Black (already in) and Mike Nifong (should be in).

   — bob    Jul 3, 10:12 AM    #

3. This sniping is silly. Take a look at some of the figures posted in this very publication for executives and people who run joint programs or are in professional programs. Just look at the average law professor salary and do some math. Comparisons to grad TAs (and I was once one too) aren’t at all relevant. The plight of grad students and TAs and adjuncts is a fight that belongs elsewhere than in her lap. She’s been a good professor to her law students from what I hear, a good director, and has been dealing with nasty N.C. politics with some style for a while.

   — E    Jul 3, 10:38 AM    #

4. When you are a spouse of a public official, you are in a service position – like it our not. Even if the salary is fair market value, it does not look good for you or for your husband. The fact that neither she nor the provost understands this, is alarming.

   — Kyle David    Jul 3, 11:18 AM    #

5. I want that job. Why don’t I ever get an $80,000 increase?

   — Laura    Jul 3, 03:59 PM    #

6. At that kind of price, her husband should at least be a Republican. Wives of Democratic incumbents are just not woth that much….Ask Sen. Clinton how much she drew during those eight years.

   — John M. Hays    Jul 3, 04:04 PM    #

7. Governors’ wives should be like Caesar’s wife: above suspicion.

   I’m not going to debate whether Mary Easley deserves $170K or not; I don’t have the facts to do so. She might or she might not.

   However, when you marry someone who chooses public life, YOU should choose (whether you like it or not) to live your life so that no one can accuse you of bilking taxpayers. Sometimes this means sacrificing your own ambitions in favor of making certain taxpayers won’t suspect you of being the beneficiary of a sweetheart deal.

   Shame on Mary Easley.

   — JPS    Jul 3, 04:14 PM    #

8. The five year commitment part may be very significant. If she doesn’t deliver that value to the University though (i.e., gets bored, starts her own company, just wants out) then there should be some serious clawback of that money. Of course, that would never happen.

   As for the rest of you who think she should avoid the APPEARANCE of conflicts and not just actual conflicts…I haven’t had standards that high since the late 80s.

   — Sam    Jul 3, 04:17 PM    #

9. Well E (#4), plenty of University administrators do earn this much and more, but their duties are considerably more demanding and generally entail extensive supervisory responsibility. Department Chairs at most any comparable institution do a heck of a lot more than this “Executive-in-Residence.” A perfect example of all that’s wrong in higher education.

   — perplexed    Jul 3, 04:21 PM    #

10. Political spending and excessive use of taypayer funds is nothing new to us. What IS truly distrurbing is the wanton, careless, disregard for how this looks to us…the “apperance” of such spending and the message it sends. It’s that very “you can’t touch me “ attitude that causes us to mistrust our public officials. This type of behavior from a university professor, or “executive-in-residence,” is shameless. Imagine what she would spend if she were and ELECTED official.
    Praises to the State Trooper for staying within the state’s guidelines.

    — Henry Averhart    Jul 3, 04:31 PM    #

11. URGENT!
    Is there a female governor who’d wish to marry a nice and fairly intelligent academic who can talk other things than “the shop”? Am in a bad need of a substantially increased salary. And of an impressive wife. Both needs have an equally high ranking. In addition to the aforementioned need, is there a university president who will reward me suitably for being “my wife’s husband”? In return for entering into such agreement, I can teach all manners of safety (public and otherwise PLUS a few other things.) Furthermore, I will offer the president access not only to the most impressive speakers, but also a chance of shaking their glorious hands in public. In view of the impressive nature of my Rollodex, I can provide the president with luminary services at the level that only a few others in the academy can reach. Moreover, as an academic service to the president, I will convince my friends not to charge their customary > >$ 20.000 fee.
    Suitable offers accepted for review and evaluation via the kind forwarding services of the editors of this noble journal who, I am sure, will gladly comply.

    — Dag von Lubitz    Jul 3, 05:06 PM    #

12. This is nothing but gross politics in American higher education.
    WVU gives the governor’s daughter a fake degree.
    Virginina’s governor hires the lottery director, who had tauught two courses at a community college, to be president of Radford University. She graduated from law school with the Governor and according to the Govelrnor’s flakies “has experience in fund raising.” Boy if university presidents could set up and run statewide lottories then fund raising would be simple. Penelope, Gov. Kaine’s friend still lives in Richmond with her lawyer husband and three kids and commutes to Radford three days a week after three years. Wow does anyone know a governor who needs an assistant who can be president

    — frank donley    Jul 3, 05:16 PM    #

13. I hope all of you get half as upset when a Division I school hires a new coach for a “little” more than the average faculty member at the same institution.
    I guess it is all relative. In the long run, you charge what you can convince the buyer you are worth – regardless of what you are selling.

    — BG    Jul 3, 07:29 PM    #

14. Wait! Come the revolution in Washington next January, all of this crap will stop! I mean it!

    — Mike Deville    Jul 3, 08:03 PM    #

15. Taking public money under shoddy pretense is a well developed practice among professional politicians. Taking advantage of cronyism in higher education is quite commonplace and tolerated very well at all levels.

    Integrity and character are vanishing traits for leadership and would be hard to recognize by people lacking same.

    Higher education in this country is not unlike that in third world countries despite self assertions to the contrary.

    Anyone with some sense can see through this scheme but few are in position to rectify it.

    North Carolina deserves the quality of the characters it elects and supports in government and education.

    What a costly joke!

    — Bill S.    Jul 3, 09:34 PM    #

16. RE: #17—Yea, right, “come the revolution.” When Obama won election to the US Senate his wife’s salary as an administrator at the not-for-profit Hospital of the University of Chicago suddenly jumped from $121,910 to $316,962. Or is your revolution a McCain revolution?

    — Old Hand    Jul 3, 11:18 PM    #

17. Bill, I resent that. I teach in a third world country known for graft and cronyism and we are nothing like North Carolina.

    — jonathan    Jul 4, 03:44 AM    #

18. Thanks Jonathan, I teach in Florida, too.

    — CW    Jul 4, 10:32 AM    #

19. #17: If you’re talking Obama, he will just be doing his OJT.

    — PJ    Jul 4, 11:26 AM    #

20. Ah, the politics of the academy! Has she never heard of the “conflict of interest”? She should not only turn down the raise but resign immediately—and pay back what she has taken. I saw irregularities as appalling at the University of Florida, but they were not interesting enough (to enough people) for Bernie Machen, Chuck Young, Dave Colburn, et al. to even bother to intervene, or even to inquire. (Think $$$ when you think UF—the pursuit of truth certainly is not the driving force at the slimy old gator hole.)

    What I saw and experienced at Florida was enough to make my stomach turn, but it is nothing compared to what is happening at NCSU.

    Universities—state universities in particular—have to clean up their acts before the politicians—and the public—do it for them.

    We are ready to do it. Gatoron was one thing, but “leadership” by a Pack of Wolves is quite another.

    We do not have to put up with this kind of nonsense—and we will not.

    Landrum Kelly, Jr., Ph.D.
    Chair, Department of History and Political Science
    Livingstone College
    Salisbury, North Carolina

    — Landrum Kelly    Jul 6, 06:58 AM    #

21. Well 10 (and 8 and 5), department chairs work so hard largely because they have to deal with departments that are usually operating with the same nasty tenor as some of these comment areas. Their jobs are hard because of the small-time, big ego and never-will-be-satisfied sniping and disruptions of academic faculty. And as for being above suspicion, there is no such thing in politics. No matter what a governor’s or senator’s wife or husband did, somebody would find or manufacture something to be just outraged by. I find it interesting that people are willing to dismiss what market rates are or what higher level executive activities require, or any element relatiing to qualifications and job task. What people are willing to do is relate their favorite university administrator scandal or raise unreasonable expectations for a spouse of someone who chose to be a public figure – and the comment about fishnets and sashaying give a good idea of what sexism underlies some of the vitriol. Plenty of men make huge amounts of money over and above minority and female colleagues. Take a look at your own institutions and especially in the state institutions with detailed salary lists, compare there. And interestingly, when number 16 commented on how much coaches were paid, nobody wanted to touch that. The same salary listings at schools with professional schools and athletics usually show the highest salaries are paid to major sport coaches, major league surgeons and researchers and the med schools and research units and then usually the executive officers. If you aren’t earning 170k as a history prof. or something, that has a lot more to do with what we are willing to be bought for in Academe than what a woman with a professional degree, substantial teaching experience and executive or adminstrative capacity is worth on the job market. If academics actually kept their eye on their own salary ball instead of distractions like this, they might get somewhere, but they don’t.

    — E    Jul 7, 01:17 PM    #

22. To #16,

    Actually I am outraged by the gross sums of money that college coaches are paid. The purpose of possecondary education should be just that, education.

    Unfortunately, having attended a university where arriving at the NCAA tournament and March Madness is the end all be all it’s easy to see how those in positions of power get caught up in the hype, unfortunately.

    Additionally, couldn’t some of this money have gone somewhere else, I don’t know, maybe paying people with positions such as these less and possibly lowering the cost of tuition.

    Oh well, I can dream. Even though by the time my children are ready to go to college cost will have tripled and I will have to sell my soul to send them to school.

    — MD    Jul 7, 04:01 PM    #

23. Oh, good grief. I’ve been in Academe for quite a while, and my perspective is quite well buttressed by experience and by observation. I also have a little bit of knowledge about the political and legal sides. I’ve been a TA and a GA and a rank and file faculty member and an administrator and an advisor to students and colleagues and also someone on governing/advisory boards, and I’ve looked at the hiring and firing and teaching and learning and scholarship and testing and just about every part of Academe that you can look at. I’ve stayed as far away from athletics as I can and still been dragged into it. So don’t start with that “perspective” bit. My point is that the outrageousness that you seem so interested in outing isn’t in the Easley episode. Did you ever ask why, with all the big state schools and private schools in N.C. (I mean, UNC and Duke and Wake Forest and East Carolina are in this baileywick too, you know), this the “outrage” that makes the papers. This is pure politics, from a state where politics is rough at best. This is, after all, the state flying flags at half mast for the passing of Jesse Helms and trying to make out like he was a man of character. Choose the right target and stop aiming at useless targets. “Humanity” as a charged lack makes no sense at all, by the way. The issue of humane treatment, if it applies at all, would apply to living wages and equitable pay in the areas of gender and race at institutions – something that many institutions are just getting to. If you want to know why, in all categories – from tuition and admission to faculty salaries and curriculum – the high principles of education seem to be fading, then look to who populates boards of trustees and boards of visitors, who donates money for special centers, and who supports athletic boosters. Look to the legislatures full of people who only pay lip service to education and refuse to boost salaries and standards and transparency. Don’t preach about the decay and then complain when someone points out that you are tarring and feathering the wrong culprits. Humanistic lessons from the Old Testament to the Classical Tradition straight through to more modern wisdom illustrate that we are forever finding scapegoats and rarely getting the real perpetrators. That is the lesson that humanistic learning might actually have for Academe.

    — E    Jul 7, 10:54 PM    #

24. #30,
    No, all innuendo and cheap shots and slurs and soundbytes and stereotypes and NO THOUGHT – that’s the problem. I’m a plain old regular coffee, cream, and sugar type actually, but that doesn’t fit your stereotype machine, does it? If I am adept at anything it is using the education I got from good teachers and mentors and my experience to actually get at the real issues. If you call that obsolete, then you have demonstrated why many of our students and so many more of those who are well beyond school age are so incapable of imagining, creating, and instituting the change that they claim to desire.

    — E    Jul 9, 10:45 AM    #

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