Presidents Are Essential, But Not to Higher Education

Thirteen years ago, I argued it is a red herring to spend resources and rancor on criticizing the compensation of presidents, deans, chancellors, and other officers of the institutions. The stink of bloated administration and compensation distracts from the scent of serious structural problems in the university and college model for higher education. A model we have inherited without challenge or alternative, in which these positions and people form clauses and parties to a social contract for the social good. In many minds, it would be hard to separate higher education from higher education institutions, though one is a means and the other an end.

Consequently, the scope of discussion on presidential compensation is not fundamental. In present circumstances the cost of the position is considered by some to be unacceptably high. This does not challenge the existence of the position, but assumes it and offers internal assessment of value, with claims of relative systemic inequity.

But ask yourself, can one of these institutions operate without a president, or its deans and other officers? Universities and colleges often operate poorly thanks to the people in these positions, but what is the provider without the position? And what relevance does this have to higher education and the people who depend upon it to earn and learn?

These questions are fundamental to higher education. Union bosses bitching about that compensation for that person as that president of that institution is fundamental only to universities and colleges and the academics who happen to be employed by them. Social goods and personal welfare are fundamental, tools for their provision and protection are not.

But let’s hear from someone who seems to disagree, someone who assumes the tools without awareness, without the slightest idea that his condemnation is nothing more than the impotent, internal, relative, petty bitching of a full professor, of an institutional employee,

Of course, “administrators” are always supposed to make more than mere laborers, and faculty are increasingly seen as “the labor” by top administrators. As a result, even though the rate of increase in pay for faculty has barely kept pace with inflation, the pay for administrators has skyrocketed. The median salary for college and university presidents at institutions of all types is now $370,940. The median at doctoral institutions is nearly $100,000 more, coming in at $465,618. December 2014 figures show that thirty-six private university presidents are now paid in excess of a million dollars per year, and another twelve make more than $900,000 per year. Altogether, there are now 106 private university presidents making over $500,000 per year.

Salaries are somewhat smaller further down the administrative pecking order, but the sheer volume of the list of bureaucrats is dazzling. Here is a partial list, with the median salaries at doctoral institutions:

Chief Business Officer: $250,000

Chief Athletics Administrator: $238,736

Chief Development/Advancement Officer” $248,373

Chief Enrollment Management Officer: $171,652

Chief Extension/Engagement Officer: $198,430

Chief External Affairs Officer: $200,069

Chief Human Resources Officer: $158,750

Chief Information/IT Officer: $208,959

Chief Student Affairs/Life Officer: $202,995

The list goes on and on—Chief Audit Officer ($129,480), Chief Health Affairs Officer ($539,537), Chief Institutional Planning Officer ($187,733), Chief Institutional Research Officer ($118,418)—and we haven’t reached anyone who deals with actual academics yet.

Of course, each of these important officials couldn’t be expected to do his or her crucial work without a sufficient staff. When a friend of mine began working at his major mid-western research university years ago, the dean’s office was a single room on the first floor of the classroom building. The dean and his attendants now occupy a whole suite of offices that extend down the hall and takes up a large portion of the floor. In earlier days, the dean had one secretary. His staff now numbers over forty.

So how about those who actually do the teaching? What was the median salary for, let us say, a tenure-track Associate Professor in English last year? Answer: $64,009. How about the median for an Associate Professor in the Biological Sciences? $72,104. In Mathematics? $68,510. Teaching students reading, writing, science, and mathematics is simply not as important in the modern university, it seems, as doing whatever it is a “Chief Extension/Engagement Officer” does.[The links are original to the article.]

Crazy Numbers Can Be Good

These crazy numbers from ten years ago are consistent with current circumstances. But the numbers are loco not because president salaries remain (arguably) unreasonable, unjust, inequitable, or unfair, nor because there remain (arguably) too many people in these institutional model positions. The numbers are crazy because the administrative positions are not necessary in the second place, because the institutions are not necessary in the first place.

One way to see PSA is as a natural progression of thinking that is common to ((unionized), faculty) employees who (collectively) bitch about these positions or the people in them. That is, PSA eliminates positions that are relevant to institutional maintenance but irrelevant to higher education, while it reduces the number of positions and people that remain to facilitate the work of academics in professional society and practice. For instance, service and stewardship of higher education under PSA does not require the Chiefs mentioned above, while organizations in the professional model, like the American Bar Association or the State Bar of California, provide service and stewardship for their social goods on a fraction of the budget and administration that is required by the inheritance, across every institution, across the globe.

Elsewhere, I have argued that the work of academics, not the work of administrators, can be performed by individuals who are professionally qualified and licensed to practice higher education independent of university or college faculty employment, as attorneys and physicians provide and protect their social goods in solo or partnered practices that earn them a living independent of law firm or hospital employment. The basic service and stewardship unit of PSA is not some university or college, some inherited institutional employer, but individual, independent practice of higher education by professional academics. PSA is the licensure of individuals, not the accreditation of institutions.

Here are some other crazy numbers. Suppose there are 5000 higher education institutions in the US and each of their presidents draws a $1,000,000 salary, for a system-wide expense of $5 billion. Do you know how much money is spent to operate the inheritance nationwide, across all types of higher education institutions, from the frontline to the bureaucratic line? I have been trying to find or formulate this number, with little success. It is without doubt in excess of the $450 billion that the National Center for Education Statistics reports for public higher education in 2020-21, and the $689 billion that was spent when we include private nonprofit institutions.

That president who plays an essential role in the inheritance, the one who is a preferred target in labour gripes over institutional budgets and employment contracts, the one who negotiates labour conditions with employees under conditions of institutional shared governance, the expense of this pivotal position is a fraction of the total cost to provide and protect higher education using universities and colleges. If you take the 2015 peak number of full-time and part-time faculty employees in the US, 1.6 million, and somehow eliminate the essential expense of a president, $5 billion, this would make available to those academics who manage to land some employment in the towers a one-time annual income bump of $3,125 apiece – with no bump to other staff and with no reduction in the total public cost to provide and protect the social good using a model that constantly cries poor. This is the spoil of a complete victory over the neoliberal, careerist, vipers that occupy the position, gloats some union boss, who is left wondering how a university can operate without a president.

Such a complete victory is incoherent in the monopolistic university and college employer model for higher education. Further, there are not 5000 institutional employers in the US and presidents are rarely paid anywhere near $1 million a year. This perspective is used to clear the air of red herring rhetoric that harms higher education by harming the earning of academics as faculty employees, who sometimes voluntarily pay union dues and who sometimes agree with the industrial and political actions of the unit that bargains for them (and so indirectly for higher education). The outcry of faculty and their union bosses over the 106 presidents who earn $500,000 or more is obviously a waste of resource and rancor, if your aim is to improve higher education, not higher education institutions.

Sure, the case can be made that if an institution has a good president, earning a respectable income, then society is getting its money’s worth for higher education. But beyond such union rhetoric, all the modifiers still need to be settled, and many other celestial bodies need to align for the dream to come true and stay true. I mean, it’s not as though a university is a benevolent dictatorship with a secure infinite supply of cash or credit.

Given this reality, why put all our eggs in one stylish tote bag from the campus gift shop? This seems reckless. Given the number of institutions, given the number of administrators, the opportunity for chaos, corruption and other alliterations of error seems high. In contrast, if there were no institutions to administer, what sort of numbers would we see in higher education? How many administrators would be needed for the service and stewardship of the social pillar? How much would they earn? What would be their functions and responsibilities? To whom would they be held accountable? How about the earning potential of academics or the number of them in service and stewardship?

Sure, the case can be made that anti-president resources and rancor are justified because they point a finger of moral condemnation at a powerful symbol of what is wrong with the modern, neoliberal, commodified, capitalized academe. But what part of it, the higher education work of academics or the higher education institutions that employ them? Here is another powerful symbol (below) of what is wrong with the inheritance. Labour unions are merely the other side of the capitalist employer-employee coin, the savior of Starbucks baristas, Ford autoworkers, and UC academics, as though all work was the same.

Sure, the case can be made that these are numbers for doctoral institutions, but the median salaries for other higher education institutions is likely less. I don’t know and I don’t care. From the POV of PSA, virtually none of the positions and nowhere near the number of people are needed to provide and protect higher education. Attorneys that earn from the solo practice (and protection) of law, can do so as the only worker, while some employ an assistant and still others opt for partnership in the employer-free practice of law. This is the basic unit of service and stewardship in professional higher education, not some inherited, monolithic, monopolistic institutional employer from whom faculty employees need protection in shared governance of their employer (through the use of labour bargaining units).

Sure, the case can be made that there is more to higher education than teaching undergraduates Aristotle or professional ethics that PSA cannot facilitate. Maybe, but I doubt that, and anyway, let’s find out. Since no one has bothered to challenge the inheritance, and it is our responsibility as academics and parties to the social contract to do so, let’s find out if PSA works only or best for the Humanities and Business. Let’s find out if academic freedom is a moot concept in a professional higher education model. Let’s find out if the quality of higher education is improved with professional provision and protection. Let’s find out if the assumed inheritance is really all it’s cracked up to be. There is so much we do not know because we assume it.

Conclusion

The title of this post alludes to the president of a country, as much as it does to that of a university. PSA shows that it is possible for society to have higher education without a university president because higher education institutions are not necessary for provision and protection of the social good. However, I doubt a professional model shakes the need for the president of a country, especially where provision and protection is a public expense sanctioned through legislation (or constitution). At the same time, government has a way of interfering in (higher) education, with President Trump being a current example, or one of his buddies in Florida. Whatever your views on political machinations and the role of government in education - I have never voted, never - they are irrelevant to the argument for PSA. The model is bi-partisan, with appeal across the political spectrum and an equally likely universal disapproval from government. I have covered potential appeal to citizen and Caesar many times on this blog, so instead, let's look at a potential political (presidential) poo-poo of the idea.

The economic and social impact of higher education (not institutions) on society is palpable, measurable, desirable. Controlling it, using it to steer, to platform, to deduct, to raise, to transform is both a responsibility of government and a resource of people in government. The line between harmful and helpful government involvement in higher education is not clear, but clarity can come from a comparative like PSA.

For instance, which do you think allows government to exercise greater control over higher education, a handful of institutions that hold a monopoly on earning and learning or a plethora of individuals that earn and learn independently of institutional employment? Which model do you think would need a greater share of public funding? Which model do you think would be in greater need of labour union representation? Which model do you think would be in greater need of campus police, bond sales, labour lawyers, corporate lawyers, litigation lawyers, plumbers, gardeners, Presidents and Chiefs? 

Whoever controls the money controls the means. But if the means dramatically reduces the costs and places control directly in the hands of the citizen (not the government), which model is then subject to greater control by the (people of) government?

These are important questions that must be answered. The rest is just footnote to an assumption. Let's explore real change, real transformation together.