Edit – please view this post at its new location
This Wisconsin State Journal article makes a pretty compelling argument. Sam Clegg and Suchita Shah have both recently argued that a lack of funding from the state legislature is the problem here at UW-Madison. However, recent discussion has lacked a state-wide perspective on the state legislature’s funding of higher education across the state at other UW System schools. The State Journal article clearly makes the case that it is indeed the failures of the state legislature to properly fund higher education and not anything we are doing wrong here on the isthmus.
5 of the 13 Chancellors of UW System schools are leaving. While it is natural for chancellors to leave, the article says the nationwide average is 8.5 years and thus we should be having 1 to 2 chancellors leaving every year on average, 2 of them are leaving for better compensation packages.
“I really love UW River Falls, ” Betz said. “Had it been a level playing field it would have been a very different decision. I would have seriously considered staying at River Falls. It wasn ‘t a level playing field.“
This is clearly not totally to blame on the state legislature, the Board of Regents determine chancellor salaries and then the state legislature approves them, but the funding for their salaries comes from funding that is determined by the state legislature and so inadequate funding from the state legislature forces UW schools to make the choice to prioritize funding. In the case of chancellor salaries it is clear that we are losing out on quality for the sake of saving money.
Jimmy Peltier, faculty chair of the UW-Whitewater chancellor search and screening committee, said he is pleased with the pool of candidates to fill the position.
Still, he noted, prospective candidates often must choose between the quality of the system and a potentially lower salary.
“One of our disadvantages we have as a state is we don ‘t offer salaries other states offer, ” Peltier said. “And that’s a challenge. “
Yet when members of the state legislature make statements on the search for the new UW-Madison Chancellor like this one by Joan Ballweg, who is the vice chair of the Assemblies Colleges and Universities Committee, is makes me wonder if they realize how little their funding allows us to pay our chancellors.
“I think this needs to be a person that would be a CEO of any Fortune 500 company, with expertise in education of course, but someone who really can understand the business side and the real side of what a major company or major institution would be.
The average Fortune 500 CEO makes an average of $15.2 million (maybe we could hire Steve Jobs away if we offered $700 million). How can we be expected to be competing to hire people like that when we are discussing raising the salary of the UW-Madison chancellor to not even $500,000. I’m sure people who are qualified to take jobs that pay over $15 million will be glad to take less than 1/30th of that to come be our chancellor. (Maybe if she would stop trying to tax the Amish and figure out a way to get us some more money we wouldn’t have these issues)
More importantly, chancellors salaries across the UW System schools are representative of the lack of financial commitment to higher education coming from the people down at the end of State Street. Seriously, there has been enough discussion about this. Now its time to get off your asses and do something.
Edit: Here is the Daily Cardinal’s version of basically the same story, including an interesting quote not in the WSJ article.
“It is pretty well known that the current salaries that chancellors are making in the state are not competitive nationally,” Betz said.
Edit: 5 could become 6
