Why do executive salaries keep increasing at the same time that student fees climb, quality erodes, and faculty and staff salaries backslide?
A. Administrators justify these compensation packages on the grounds that higher education systems are complex enterprise and that market demands such salaries. This view reflects a corporate mentality that sees the quality of higher education as determined by top executives, not the students, faculty and staff at the bottom. More important, it is a symptom of the creeping privatization of higher education. As the governors reduce public support for UC and CSU, more and more of UC and CSU’s leaders’ time goes to private fundraising, less to administering higher education as a public trust. From this perspective, privatized universities have to pay private sector salaries to the people at the top. Learn more and comment.
