Administrators’ salaries not exempt from cuts

In the wake of additional budget cuts recently proposed by Governor Sonny Perdue, the entire Tech community has been scrambling to find ways to offset the financial impact to the Institute.

Additional staff layoffs, expanded class sizes and increased tuition rates have all been thrown around as possible options, leading, in the latter case, to a meeting between the governor and student body presidents from across the state.

Yet one option that has not received as much attention is cuts to the existing salaries of top-level administrators, or, at the very least, scaling back their pay raises. The idea is that these administrators, who earn annual salaries of well over $100,000, could afford the loss, which would lessen the financial burden on the rest of the Institute.

This is a proposal that has stirred some discussion after Dan Embree, a professor of English at Mississippi State University, published an editorial detailing the salary increases of the faculty, staff and administration over the past five years. He noted a 53.3 percent pay raise for the president while the faculty received an average raise of only percent.

“The situation that Embree describes is.a national problem,” said Mike S. Adams, a professor of Criminal Justice at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, in an online post at radicalacademy.com last June. “I have written previously about the elitist mindset of administrators at my university.”

Similar figures are present in the University of Georgia System. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Board of Regents had approved a $180,000 salary increase for Medical College of Georgia President Dan Rahn just before they heard about the Governor’s budget cuts, bringing his total salary to $527,000. The report added that salaries of the presidents of all four University System of Georgia research universities have increased by 65 percent to 100 percent since 2000.

“I understand you have to pay a price for education,” Gerald Heavens, a junior at Clayton College and State University and president of its Student Government Association, told the AJC. “At some point, that price doesn’t need to increase because individuals won’t make sacrifices themselves.”

However, according to Gary May, executive assistant to the President, even the salaries of Tech’s top administrators have been affected by the budget cuts. There have been no large salary increases in the administration in at least two years.

“We had our salaries frozen the year before last,” May said. “This past year, the state put a two percent raise into the budget, and so.we gave all the faculty and staff a two percent [average] raise.”

May added, “We haven’t done anything where there’s been a tremendous increase in any particular administrator’s salary.”

However, that still raises the possibility of reducing the current salaries of the administration and faculty in order to avoid layoffs. But May said that because Tech is dedicated to preserving the core activities of teaching and research, layoffs are preferable to pay cuts.

“What will happen is you get attrition,” he said. “People will leave [if you cut their salaries, and] there are a lot of other institutions that would like to hire some of our folks.If we want to remain competitive, I think when we start thinking about cutting salaries, that’s not the way.”

Preserving the current faculty and administration is so critical, he said, that despite the budget cuts, the Institute still has the resources to counter offers that faculty might get from other universities.

“Usually.that’s done with private money,” May said. “In a competitive situation, we have to address that those things still do happen.”

According to May, remaining competitive in teaching and research is why approximately 50 Tech employees who work in non-core activities have been downsized so far while all faculty are still employed.

“I will say that laying off faculty is, number one, difficult to do. You have tenured faculty, of course.People have contracts,” May said. “Number two, I think it’s really the absolute last resort.If we get to that point, I think that the future outlook for Georgia Tech would be very grim.”

There has been some agreement from students, including Jonathan Sharma, a second-year Aerospace Engineering major.

“The administration at the school is very, very important to Tech’s success,” Sharma said. If salaries were cut, he said, “Tech would lose some very important assets.”

Besides, May said, a freeze on salaries is, in effect, a cut in pay.

“People’s take-home pay was less than it was before, because insurance [and parking] went up.[and] things like that happened,” he said. “Our administration, faculty and staff feel the impact of the budget crunch as much as anyone else.”

For instance, while Tech will not consider laying off faculty, the budget crunch means vacant faculty positions remain unfilled. Furthermore, May said that some of the layoffs have already happened to administrators.

“We don’t distinguish between administration and staff,” he said. “I don’t know if students understand those definitions clearly.”

Regardless, students like Justin Kingsly, a third-year Industrial Engineering major, say that they would prefer not to see any faculty or administrators receive a pay cut and risk losing them.

“We.take pride in our excellent teachers,” said Kingsly. “Minds of such great caliber deserve their salary.”

May said that the administration returns the sentiment.

“We’re very grateful for [the students’] activities, and we’re very proud of the way that they’ve responded [to the cuts],” May said. “We hope that some positive results will come out of this."