School president’s pay: Is this UMass or Wall Street?

The Boston Globe
January 25, 2010

JACK WILSON, president of the University of Massachusetts system, was awarded a raise of almost $73,000 this year. Apparently, the UMass trustees judged that his previous salary of $473,000 - and his housing allowance of $45,000, his $25,000 in deferred compensation, his $51,000 retirement annuity, and the use of a car - was not sufficient to support the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed.

The UMass faculty have been cut in numbers, lost benefits, and taken on more teaching, research, and service, all while winning more grant support than ever. UMass students and their families are paying dramatically higher fees.

The average professor at UMass-Amherst works more than 66 hours a week, and earns just slightly more than the raise the president received. Those faculty are left waiting for the state to recognize the value of public higher education in the Commonwealth. Massachusetts is now nearly last in the country in support for public higher education, and has cut its support for higher ed more than any other state in the last five years.

Why do we accept this Wall Street bailout-style abuse, where dramatically scarce higher ed funds are used to boost the president’s salary instead of helping families of UMass students and the dedicated staff of the university? Wilson teaches no students, does no research, and has failed to win state support for UMass. He deserves his raise as much as the Wall Street bankers deserve theirs.

Randall Phillis
Amherst
The writer, an associate professor of biology at UMass-Amherst, is president of the Massachusetts Society of Professors.