Just a few days ago, I got yet another super-engaging budget update e-mail from university President Dan Mote, assuring us yet again we will probably not run completely out of money in the near future. The last quarter or so of the message was dedicated to iterating how much the administration would love to hear our questions about the budget process. Fine, I have a question: Why did Mote earn about $35,000 more last year than he did the year before?
That’s right, according to numbers released earlier this month by The Chronicle of Higher Education, our university’s president took a five-digit increase in salary and retirement pay during a year that encompassed the worst part of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. During a school year in which some employees had to take as many as five furlough days — roughly a 2 percent pay cut — to decrease salary costs, Mote’s salary increased by more than 5 percent, even after considering the income he lost due to six furlough days. In the same 12 months, administrators created the Keep Me Maryland drive to provide emergency aid to students who could no longer afford to attend the university, Mote’s total compensation, which includes his retirement pay, increased from a whopping $463,213 to an even more whopping $498,284. The difference could have helped keep a number of students at the university.
It is understood that most of the salaries paid last academic year were actually based on pay-raise decisions made in the previous school year, and in May 2008 the economy looked quite a bit sunnier than it did half a year later. The Board of Regents did not bump Mote’s pay while facing millions of dollars in cuts; instead, the budget was quite stable when it decided Mote could have an additional $35,000. It’s doubtful many administrators foresaw the economic woes of late 2008 when they approved such pay raises for the 2008-2009 academic year.
Still, a hard look at pay increases for top-paid employees during a particularly hard economic year might yield some new ideas for meeting the series of budget cuts university administrators are sure to face this school year. Perhaps Mote could encourage employees pulling six figures to donate back their 2008-2009 school year pay increases by donating his sizable increase. In an organization like the University System of Maryland where the majority of budgeted expenditures come in the form of salary payments, a scheme such as this one might be one of the few ways to meet a massive funding cut without program eliminations or massive tuition increases. And after all, did much-maligned Department of Transportation Services Director David Allen really deserve a salary increase of more than 20 percent last year? Survey says: probably not.
Whether the university is able to recover the pay increases we saw last academic year, as a student body we need to ask tough questions concerning the budget. The tuition freeze has ended, signaling if we don’t keep administrators straight, we’ll probably be the ones who end up paying the bill.
John Silberholz is a senior computer science and mathematics major. He can be reached at silberholz at umdbk dot com.
