August 26, 2008

Nevada Governor Fires Back at University Chancellor in Budget Dispute

The pugnacious chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, James E. Rogers, has for months waged a public campaign attacking the state’s governor for his proposed budget cuts of up to 16 percent for the system. Last week Gov. James Gibbons fired back with an angry letter of his own, in which he singled out university salaries for criticism.

“The system of higher education currently employs 1,328 people who are paid $100,000 or more annually,” Mr. Gibbons, a Republican, wrote, according to the Las Vegas Sun. “I cannot help but wonder how many Nevadans would support an income tax, or any increased taxes for that matter, to sustain those salary levels in the face of significant government spending reductions in other areas.”

Mr. Rogers is hardly backing down. In a terse reply, he said that the governor’s letter “confirmed every one of my fears and concerns” and that it was clear that Mr. Gibbons had “no problem in sacrificing education.”

And today Mr. Rogers released a public memorandum, under the heading “Hope, hope. There is hope,” in which he says the state’s Legislature will find a financial solution that “at least will prevent the dismantling of the Nevada System of Higher Education.” —Paul Fain

Comments

1. Cutting the salaries of people (mostly administrative bureaucrats) who earn more than $100,000 a year doesn’t sound like “sacrificing education” to me, Chancellor Rogers. It sounds like good financial management, something universities are oblivious to.

   — citizen    Aug 26, 02:14 PM    #

2. @citizen

   Do you have any idea what top professionals make in other industries? Calling $100,000 a big salary is evidence of ignorance. Is $100,000 unusual for a trial lawyer, a medical doctor, a marketing director of a Fortune 500 company? When I talk to friends who have worked 15-20 years in the private sector, they laugh that someone would get a Ph.D. and then struggle to make six figures. Heck, guys without even a high school diploma make six figures working in the oil fields.

   Here’s a link to starting MBA salaries for the top schools:
   http://www.admissionsconsultants.com/mba/compensation.asp

   There’s this thing called the market that apparently this Republican governor doesn’t understand.

   — me    Aug 26, 03:07 PM    #

3. As the head of a university nursing program my salary looked like it was slightly over $55/hr – based on a 40 hour work week – but a 40 hour work week was a joke – and when one considers that my average work week was consistently in excess of 60 hr, the hourly salary was considerably lower. Tell me Governor Gibbons, what is it worth to you to know that the nurses caring for you and those you love are well prepared for their roles? Had I been an administrator in the service sector, my salary would have been double what it was in academe.

   — TDD    Aug 26, 03:29 PM    #

4. Let’s be frank…even an untenured professor at a large public university has a good gig, and all on the government teat, while they write books, conduct useless research, or heaven forbid, teach two or three classes for a few hours a week. Colleges and universities have grown far out of proportion to what they contribute, and their students, those who finish, even those who don’t finish, leave with a mountain of debt. I say $70,000 a year is more than generous, considering their work loads, and nearly double what a public schoolteacher, with six times the workload, makes. It would also be pretty naive to think that all of this money actually goes to teacher salaries. There are plenty of administrator blackholes to account for the huge sucking sound colleges and universities make. They need to sell their polo ponies, divest themselves of the heated stadium seats, and get rid of the wine collection, and get back to the business of graduating competent, confident students.

   — Damajah    Aug 26, 03:29 PM    #

5. Cut those salaries and see what a challenge it will be to educate Nevadans. Start with the salaries of athletic coaches and ADs. See how that goes! We need football a lot less than good chemistry professors!

   — hwf    Aug 26, 03:40 PM    #

6. Damajah: Strange, it’s usually the people who think universities are useless except as sports camps who demand the heated stadium seats. And then condemn universities for having them.

   — Sat Churmit-Dazhy    Aug 26, 03:40 PM    #

7. No one gets my polo pony!

   — DG    Aug 26, 03:42 PM    #

8. What is the governor’s salary? Sure, cut administrators’ salaries. All the good ones will leave, and then the university will really be in trouble. Nevada, though, will have cut its budget.

   — TAD    Aug 26, 03:46 PM    #

9. By all means do cut those salaries soon – our faculty recruiting season is about to begin! And watch as millions of research dollars leave the state.

   — A competitor institution    Aug 26, 03:47 PM    #

10. I love it. Nevada, like most states, spends $1 billion or more of tax dollars on public higher education yet suggests that it should pay administrators significantly below-market salaries to take care of the investment. You get what you pay for, Nevada. One more reason why I would never live there.

    — Jayte    Aug 26, 03:50 PM    #

11. The sad true is this entire discussion is a distraction from the real issue. The wealthy, over at least the last 30 years, have been absorbing more and more of society’s wealth. This leaves the rest of us fighting over the scraps — including the underfunding of pure science, culture, and intellectual development.

    — Amy    Aug 26, 03:51 PM    #

12. Jayte: Beats me why anyone would live in Nevada. I just don’t see the attraction in living in a state that will soon be without water.

    — Sat Churmit-Dazhy    Aug 26, 03:58 PM    #

13. Why live in NV? Legal prostitution for one!

    — bo    Aug 26, 04:04 PM    #

14. Let’s just put it in prospective. You all must also realize that as a Nevadan, I do not pay state income tax; so all education pk-16 is paid for by other taxes. Maybe if Nevadans took on a little of the burden ourselves, we would not have this problem and could afford to finance the higher tier education that we so long for.

    — KG    Aug 26, 04:06 PM    #

15. @hwf: Athletic budgets at major universities are separate from the rest of the university, but you make an excellent point. Everyone accepts what would happen if you arbitrarily cap coaches salaries at $60,000 because that’s (by some measure) a “good enough” salary.

    @damajah: Don’t you have anything better to do than troll? Do you really expect someone to respond to your ‘facts’?

    — me    Aug 26, 04:15 PM    #

16. Governor, you have finally broken the code. You have hit Democrats and professional liberals at their most vulnerable place. How dare you. Universities in this country have become huge black holes with highly paid administrators and job-protected professors who scream for more and more money each year. And as you can tell by some of the postings, if someone like you even thinks of questioning what is spent, you are forever labeled as anti-education, when that is not the case at all. Without budget restraints, Universities see the public trough as endless. University professors seem aloof to reality- very much like the now-fired professor at Fort Hays State- overpaid, underworked, and out of control. The problem with University thinking is demonstrated by two points- 1) my daughter is a junior and in the approximately 20 classes she has taken so far, her classes have been taught by two professors and the rest by graduate assistants with no teaching experience, and 2) look at the website for “UNLV highlights”- http://www.unlv.edu/highlights/. The first story is about how many science articles the UNLV professors publish, the second about how good their PHD literature program is, and the third about a new multii-million rec center for students. Absolutely nothing about how or why delivering an education to students is important. Thank you Governor for your leadership- Keep it up.

    — blh    Aug 26, 04:59 PM    #

17. Post #2:

    The comparison of a higher education administrator (not faculty) making 6 figures to a trial lawyer, medical director or anyone in the private sector is merely an attack on capitalism. A Director of Career Services, Housing, or Recreational Sports at a university simply has no career risk vis-a-vis private professions. And when you consider the benefits and lifestyle, a 6 figure salary is disproportionate. Pay the faculty, make them teach more classes and cut the BS overhead for non-academic functions.

    — Vlad    Aug 26, 05:05 PM    #

18. I love how geeks always blame sports, go ahead take away the sports teams and then see how much money you are not going to get. I work in the private sector and I think you should get paid for how much you bring in. If you are a PH.D who brings in high research grants, make your 6 figures, if you are a Ph.D who writes a book about poop, don’t make 6 figures. As far as football, they bring in billions of dollars, not only in TV revenue but Alumni revenue, get ride of sports team you geeks and you will end up at McDonalds….

    — oh boy    Aug 26, 05:26 PM    #

19. #16 blh: Strange, when Republicans take over higher education, administration is not cut, and administrator salaries tend to increase. And you still seem oblivious to the fact that if you really think that “delivering an education to students is important,” you have to pay for quality. If one were to cut professor salaries as you seem to demand, you’ll just end up with your better professors leaving, and more classes taught by graduate students. Supply and demand, remember? And it’s a sad but true state of affairs that many institutions, in order to remain competitive, have to offer frills like rec centers to get qualified students through the door, to say nothing of teams and hugely expensive computer infrastructure.

    #17 Vlad: You make no sense. University bureaucrats are fired all the time, whereas trial lawyers and the like suffer little from the “career risk” you mention.

    #18 oh boy: You’re kidding, aren’t you? At most universities, varsity athletics are money LOSERS, not money EARNERS.

    — Sat Churmit-Dazhy    Aug 26, 05:40 PM    #

20. I teach law. I went to a top tier law school (racking up $40,000 in credit-card debt to pay for it because federally-subsidized student loans were capped at half of what it cost to live where the school was located). I clerked for a federal judge, practiced in the private sector, won the vast majority of cases I worked on, then chose to move to law teaching because I wanted to make an impact on people other than my clients and their adversaries and I wasn’t sufficiently wealthy or politically connected to become a judge. After 10 years of teaching, publishing, and serving on numerous law school, university, bar, and academic committees, my law school salary is about $130,000/year. I could pick up the phone, make a few calls, and triple that (at least) if I was willing to return to private practice. Law professors, B-school professors, medical school professors make significantly more than classics professors because their market value (i.e., opportunity cost) is higher.

    As for why professors make substantially more than elementary school teachers, I argue that the problem isn’t that professors are overpaid, it’s that K-12 is grossly underfunded. I help prepare my students for a career; K-12 teachers prepare them for life. But, school children can’t vote and the more-than-reasonable entreaties from school teachers and principals can easily be written off as “bleeding-heart” liberal/union diatribes from people who obviously can’t do, otherwise they wouldn’t have chosen to teach. On the other hand, snowbird retirees who own property in Nevada but have no stake at all in its future can and do vote and make campaign contributions. You do the math: Nevada is 14th in per-capita personal income and either 49th or 50th in per-capita expenditures on public education.

    Two other tidbits. First, an 18-year old with a driver’s license can earn updwards of $80,000/year as a valet at the Bellagio. Factor that in when you’re judging whether faculty salaries are “too high.” Second, the “pugnacious” Jim Rogers has given or pledged more than a hundred million dollars of his own money to support higher education in Nevada, Arizona, California, and elsewhere. He does not accept a salary for his service as chancellor. He neither needs nor suckles from the teat.

    — law prof    Aug 26, 05:43 PM    #

21. Don’t be so sure that all those high salaries are adminstrators. At my public university of about 5,000 students, only 10 of the 43 persons earning over $100K in one recent year were administrators. The rest were faculty. Over 10% of the faculty.

    Faculty salaries may be much lower than actual faculty earnings. Some faculty increase earnings by tens of thousands of dollars (20-30%) by teaching overload, online, summer, etc. (Administrators under 12-month contracts typically lack such opportunties.)

    According to AAUP figures available through the Chronicle, the average salary of a full professor at UNLV in 2007-08 was $114K. Unless there is a very wide scale or very great disparity between fields, it would appear most full professors’ salaries were over $100K. With the average for associates at $86K, some of them may well be in this category as well.

    Check your assumptions. What “we all know” is often not true. Don’t you tell your students that?

    — drj50    Aug 26, 05:47 PM    #

22. Did the governor say how many people in state government earn over $100K? I ‘m guessing quite a few.

    — John    Aug 26, 06:00 PM    #

23. When I see someone advising students making $145K when someone could do a better job of it at $40K (job was based on education level/degree not on job value) then I have to sometimes wonder about cost.

    — G Lovett    Aug 26, 07:20 PM    #

24. #19 says “University bureaucrats are fired all the time.”

    Please name me 3 university bureaucrats making over $100k fired in the last 5 years.

    Have you noticed the employment numbers of late? Private sector jobs are getting cut significantly, whereas the government keeps hiring. This is most apparent in higher ed, where cuts are miniscule compared to the private sector. The employment risk in higher ed is small – read the Chronicle’s article about Wisconsin’s “back up jobs.” 3 convicted felons were still receiving pay checks. And you compare higher ed employment to private sector employment?

    — Vlad    Aug 26, 07:47 PM    #

25. This whole conversation, starting with the Governor, ignores the role of the university as an institution that discovers, critiques and revises knowledge as well as teaching classes and offering degrees. In addition, it is a model that wrongly ignores the classroom as a source of the criticism and revision of knowledge.

    The Governor does not understand the role of a well led institution as a long term asset to the development and transmission of knowledge in his state and as an economic engine in a state whose long range dependence on gambling for state funding will eventually decline.

    There is a national growth of Las Vegas style casinos in many states offering not only gambling but also nationally competitive entertainment. This will inevitably draw from the Nevada mystique.

    The Governor needs to think about how to invest in the future of his state and stop perceiving its universities as large scale school districts whose prime function is to schedule classes and graduate career oriented bachelor students.

    — lef    Aug 26, 09:23 PM    #

Previous: A Mysterious Silence Emanates From Warren National U.
Next: Stanford to Restrict Industry Sponsorship of Continuing Medical Education