Iowa presidents among select few

The presidents of Iowa's three regent universities are in rarefied company when it comes to getting a pay boost for 2011-12.

Of the nearly 30 peer schools that Iowa's universities use for comparison and benchmarks purposes, only four said their presidents or chancellors have received salary increases for 2011-12. Several schools said presidential pay for the current year has yet to be set, and a few did not respond to a request for information about it.

Iowa's Board of Regents earlier this month approved 4 percent salary increases for Sally Mason at the University of Iowa, Gregory Geoffroy at Iowa State University and Ben Allen at the University of Northern Iowa.

The trend nationally appears to be public university presidents going without salary increases, often for the second or third year in a row, as they struggle with cuts.

Regents President Craig Lang hopes Iowa's ability to give pay raises to its university leaders this year results in bumping the schools up to the middle of the pack among peers when it comes to presidential pay. That helps attract and retain good leadership and reward a job well done, Lang said.

ISU and the UI, especially, ranked near the bottom of their peers for presidential pay in recent years. None of the presidents got raises in 2009. Mason got a 3.3 percent increase in 2010-11, her first raise since joining the UI in 2007, and Geoffroy and Allen declined pay raises last year.

“We're not going to be the university that pays the top, but we don't want to be the regent system that pays the lowest,” Lang said. “These are extraordinary people; they have extraordinary skills and leadership. To do anything less than that, when the Iowa economy was stable, in our opinion was not the message we wanted to send.”

The board's desire to get the presidents closer to the middle among peer salaries was secondary to recognizing the leaders for achieving performance goals, such as boosting enrollment and retention, attracting more private funds and external grants during a time of budget cuts and working together to create more efficiencies, Lang said.

“Regardless of what the peer group is, we really wanted to look at the presidents based on their performance to Iowans,” Lang said.

State Rep. Jeff Kaufmann, a Republican from Wilton, called the raises disappointing, given the way the universities and regents officials talked about their critical financial situation during the legislative session.

“So they received that appropriation and now we give people making almost a half-a-million dollars a year a 4 percent increase. Call it Cedar County logic, but something doesn't add up there,” Kaufmann said. “Given what we were told all last session, I don't think this was sensible.”

Despite a leadership change on the board prompted by prodding from Gov. Terry Branstad - Lang is a Republican and former President David Miles is a Democrat - and three new regents appointed by Branstad in the spring, Kaufmann sees the unanimous board vote to increase presidential pay as proof the fiscal direction of the board hasn't changed.

“I believe a board of regents should read the temperature of what Iowans want, believe they should look at the fiscal situation we are in and essentially say no,” Kaufmann said.

Given the competitive environment for university leaders and the number of schools searching for presidents, the board thought giving raises was the right move, Lang said. There was discussion of a 5 percent pay boost for the presidents, he said, but they decided that was not appropriate given the economy. The 4 percent raise was the right level for rewarding performance while recognizing the budget cuts of recent years, he said.

Among the four peer schools where presidents have gotten raises for 2011-12, the pay bumps ranged from 1.7 percent to 12 percent. Those schools were Indiana University (12 percent), Purdue University (3.5 percent), Illinois State (4 percent) and Ohio University (1.7 percent).

Median total compensation, which includes base salary and additional pay such as deferred compensation, was $375,442 in 2009-10 for college presidents, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Many universities, including the UI, ISU and UNI, offer longevity pay in the form of deferred compensation to keep presidents around.

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