OT: Gee is the land's highest paid University president
Especially ironic given that the guy works for Tressel: http://chronicle.com/article/Presidents-Defend-Their-Pay-as/126971/#
(Mods: feel free to kill if the comments start to go down a political road.)
being a scumbag cost a lot of money.
until Tressel fires him
It's not even close:
Whoever signs off on that kind of compensation for Gee is an idiot.
Judging by Tressel's recent antics, I would say yes, he is an idiot.
Gee = empty suit
...Jeebus, it's not like he's in the private sector. A salary like that makes public sector CEO's in Canada cry tears of anguish.
As for the Ohio State Board that approves of that...
Also, am I the only one who thinks the kid on the right is holding a "Free RichRod" sign?
Because in our system it's only a quasi-public market. Free market pressures exist in the public sector in the USA, moreso than Canada, because of the bigger private sector.
(16 private universities in Canada according to Wikipedia, 1,845 in 'murrica from a place called infoplease.com)
You'd be amazed what the public sector CEO salaries are up here and particularly in hospital systems.
As an interesting comparison to the tOSU situation, the president at The University of Western Ontario (26 000 students) made $440 000 last year. I'm not sure that Ohio State's president warrants 4.5x that amount for 60 000 students. Then again, if it was converted to Canadian dollars it would only be 3.5x that amount.
Of course, there is nothing to prevent a Canadian university president from taking a job in the United States and vice-versa. Also, public universities compete against each other plenty for qualified candidates.
Wow, good for him though.
It should be noted that he can only be called the highest paid *public* university president, since private universities do not disclose the pay of their employees. I would not be at all surprised if, say, Harvard's president was paid more.
So it is possible that OSU's players were merely raising money to come up with the scratch to pay Gee's salary. No wonder Tressel kept it a secret.
I don't think this is so bad (as a broad issue). Gee is a gaff machine on the level of George Bush or Joe Biden though (see? all good because I included people from both major parties).
He's stuck his foot in his mouth twice in the past six months in a big way. I'm assuming schools only want their presidents on the news releasing good news.
I believe by politics he was referring more to the teachers union and pay cuts. Gee is the highest paid president by almost double and they are cutting into teachers benefits to make up for the state's budget deficit. That is or should be the main point of this issue, not how it's a quasi public market blah, blah, blah.
OSU likely does not pay Gee using taxpayer funds, or if they do, it's likely a small portion akin to what their governor or another high-ranking government employee gets.
This isn't similar to a teacher who is totally supported by tax dollars, thus the quasi-public market.
A much larger portion of that salary is paid out of state and federal tax dollars than you think. Also as college tuition rises every year and students are saddled with enormous loans to pay back coming out of college, I want you to think about the effect paying someone this salary has. Now I want to ask what it is Gee brings to the table to warrant this salary. This is all based on and funded by a public market.
Private market priciples affect compensation in the public university sector. I would guess that in order to get Gee back at OSU, they had to outbid Vanderbilt.
I'm not saying that Gee is worth his salary or he isn't, only saying that it's apparently justified (well Gee's wouldn't be, at number one, but the rest of the list apparently is) in economic terms. Stopping before I hit on the political stuff you talked about, university president's salaries aren't what is driving tuition hikes.
It may not be the driving force but it cerainly impacts tuition hikes. Also you are assuming private schools are setting the market because they can outbid public schools. Vanderbilt is case and point that public universities are capable of paying the highest salaries. Why? State and federal money.
OSU has an operating budget of 4.5b. His salary is pretty insignificant when you look at the costs to run the university. Cost increases are due to a lot of other, bigger issues.
You make a good point that public schools might be setting the bar, obviously we don't have the information to know whether either of us is correct. I'd say they probably aren't, though I could be completely wrong: we just don't know.
Edit: Article from the Harvard Crimson on Ivy compensation.
To comment further on the article, in 2004 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute paid its president ~$984,000, Penn paid out ~$767,000, Harvard ~$600,000. Vandy paid Gee $1.17m
Obviously this doesn't tell who the driving force is, but private salaries are larger than public ones, at least in some cases.
Good arguement. I would guess that somewhere in the middle lies the truth.
I don't like it when people say/write things about something not coming out of a certain pot of money. Ultimately, all of the money comes from OSU's budget, regardless of which account the money is drawn from. A dollar to him likely means a dollar doesn't go elsewhere or isn't saved in the endowment.
I'm not passing judgement on him. He's a gaff machine, but he wears awesome bow ties, is probably brilliant, and has probably more than earned his weight in fundraising and state appropriations.
OTOH, I was surprised at how much the school got in state funds. That's a nice chunk of change.
Without getting too political, I do realize and dislike that the state pays part of the weight.
OTOH, if OSU is better off financially by paying Gee his $1.8m then they are paying a "lesser" president $500k, then that can ultimately save money for taxpayers which would be good, IMO.
I get what you are saying, but in fact it can make a huge difference in some cases. There is not absolute liquidity between funds; restrictions do exist.
This is a crude and overly obvious example, but it's worth bringing up: A university might be able to issue bonds for capital funds to build a new facility; they could not have issued bonds to, say, create a bigger pool of aid dollars, or offset operating expenses so they can reduce tuition. And yet I definitely hear students express outrage about new buildings when the money "should have been spent to reduce tuition". In fact, the U couldn't have done that.
I see your point, I just felt it was a little too broad-brush.
The bigger issue, IMO, is why Gee rates so much more compensation than presidents of major systems like, say, Yudof. If Yudof made crazy money, it would make absolute sense to me (even given the staggering budget woes in the higher ed system there). I am mystified by Gee's pay.
first thought i had when i saw that today was "wow. he sure gets paid a lot just to suck up to tressel"
Gee's primary job is to be Ohio State's chief fundraiser, and he does it very well.
[insert joke about Pryor's corvette]
The college football related "gaffs" are fun for sports fans to chuckle at, but they don't register in the real world.
No, but the do resonate with people involved in OSU's probably #2 or #3 biggest moneymaker.
(I have no idea but I'm assuming it goes something like 1) Research grants, 2) tuition 3) AD 4) state aid.)
There's little Gee could say that would impact football revenues significantly.
That being said, football is a very small portion of the revenue "pie"
|
Budget, 2010-2011 (as approved by Trustees) |
|
| Total income | $4.82 billion |
| State appropriations | $590 million |
| Other government | $376 million |
| Student fees | $833 million |
| Hospitals | $1.83 billion |
| Auxiliaries (residence halls, Athletics, etc.) | $336 million |
| Other income | $848 million |
OSU football revenue is about $70 million. Profit is half of that. So yes, football really isn't that big of a deal. (Numbers for Michigan are very similar)
Hmm...never seen a university budget broken down like that. Thanks.
I realize it's not going to effect revenue that much, but that's where he's in the spotlight and he comes off as ignorant when he does.
What's interesting is that Ohio State seems to be more of a health care company than anything else. I think UM is the same way.
Do you have a similar table for UM? Or a link to where you got that one that I might find UM's version.
Sorry, F... Gee, Fuck Ohio State and everything their program stands for. That POS was talking all that shit that about programs like Tcu not belonging in the NC picture last year etc. Take you millions and shove it up your ass Gee. !
No wonder coaches' base incomes are so much lower than their actual salaries. None of those presidents makes half of what a good football coach or a very good basketball coach makes when all of the income is counted, but their salaries look large compared to base salaries.
I don't understand, U of M rakes in more money than OSU per year, but their president is paid more than double ours? I think the difference is that more of our money goes towards research and actually educating our students...
According to whom do we rake in more money?
If I were going with my intuition, I'd say OSU takes in far more in advertisement deals, athletics, etc. Maybe less in tuition. But I'd figure they earn more on those ad deals. (Horseshoe is really just littered with corporate ads.)
don't think of sports when talking about net revenue of a college as large as michigan or osu. sorry but that will be in millions or tens of millions at a max, net revenue of major state colleges is in billions.
if you read the previous posts giving the revenue of osu (4.9billion) and the link to michigan's 2010 budget (net revenue of 5.4billion) you will see that we make about $600 million more than osu but pay our president $1.1 million less.
UM- $4.8b operating budget/ $7.6b endowment
OSU- $4.5b operating budget/ $1.73b endowment.
Wow. We have a huge endowment. (No, she didn't say that.)
2nd highest public university endowment in all the land, and 7th overall. Also tops in the Big Ten (Northwestern is 2nd, over $0.5B less).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_U…
One note/question about endowments - they can be used to pay running/function costs for the University, but I'm not sure how much of it can be used for salaries of admins, since that could be a conflict of interest. That said, MSC's pay probably could be higher if she really foguht for it, but appears to be content.
I know in most cases, especially big endowments like OSU or M, the president's/administration don't have control of the endowments. They hire an investor to be in charge of the whole thing.
Well, to be honest, Mary Sue is only a little down the list. I mean, yes, Gee blows everyone out of the ballpark, but he's really just an outlier. Cal is a much bigger system with comparable academics (less so in athletics) and their president earns roughly the same.
Based on that list, though, it seems like market value for a elite public university president is around $700-800K. I'm not sure why OSU would deem Gee to be worth double what anyone else at a public school was making.
This obviously doesn't get to the root of your question (why is he worth that much?) but he was making ~$1.2m at Vandy before he went back to OSU. I'm thinking $1.8m was what it took to get him to return.
I have no idea why he's worth more than every other president, including ones who preside over entire school systems. The University of California system undoubtedly has multiple times the students and budget than OSU does.
Makes a good living. That is all I am saying. Then again, keeping the University affloat and at the academic quality we expect while not receiving money from the state probably warrants that.
Check out the president of Central Florida. I am surprised that UCF has the highest paid president in the state of Florida given the shear number of major schools in the state. If I were a betting man I would be broke because I would have bet the house that FSU would have the highest paid president.
Pair that with the fact Florida doesn't have an income tax and he is doing quite well.