Lauren RabainoGuess what – it happened. Again.
Just when you thought he couldn’t make any more, the CSU Board of Trustees go and give our president another raise. A whopping $29,837 raise, not to mention that he is supplied with a $60,000 annual housing allowance (even though he could live in the president’s house on campus for free) and can receive an assigned university vehicle or receive $12,000 for an annual vehicle allowance (meaning he could buy a small car annually).
Face it: Our university president now makes more than the governor of California.
But Baker isn’t the problem. Sure, 95 percent of you have never met the man (or you have and you just didn’t realize it) and resent him for it, and it’s true – as the president of Cal Poly, he should seek out a little more face time with the students. But there’s no disagreeing that he does a lot for our school – just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean he’s not affecting your everyday life as a student. In fact, if it weren’t for him, none of you philosophy, dance, theater or MLL majors would be here. He pushes hard for science and math, and he’s a huge reason why our school even receives private donations that fund scholarships and buildings.
Still, $328,209 is a bit excessive. That’s more than most families make collectively. And within the last two years, these CSU executives have received 34.7-percent salary increases.
But forget merit – the worst part is that the central argument for why these 28 officials should receive a raise is that other universities across the country make 46 percent more than them on average. Naturally, this argument makes it sound like the pay of every last university president was taken into consideration and averaged out, and the CSU just fell short. But that’s not the whole story.
What really happened was that CPEC only looked at a total of 20 universities. These universities were meant to mirror the CSU in some way. So CPEC chose to look at five each universities in the northeast, north central, southern and western regions – with five private universities among them. How can you possibly come up with a realistic analysis of how much university presidents are paid across the country if you are only looking at 20 schools? And to compare a school like CSU San Marcos to USC? Come on. As a result, the lowest-paid CSU president now makes $270,000 and will undoubtedly see several more raises in the future.
Several officials say the pay raise came at a bad time and they really couldn’t be more right. Student fees have gone up $84 per quarter and are now twice what they were five years ago – not to mention that the faculty still aren’t completely satisfied. It is unbelievable to think that only two people in the Board of Trustees’ discussion were in opposition to this proposal.
The president of the California Faculty Association, Lillian Taiz, said to the Trustees on Tuesday: “Your actions today make it very clear that executive salaries are the only issues this board seems determined to address. We wish you would find the same level of determination when dealing with skyrocketing fees and overcrowded classrooms that you do when providing executives’ raises.”
And they still got raises anyway.