UI salaries may be justified, earned

To the editor:

The article in the Sunday Gazette on 'over-max” salaries is an incomplete effort at best ('Over-max' UI salaries questioned). The author failed to perform research into how these salaries fit with comparable positions at comparable employers and glossed over the fact that some have unique qualifications that may demand higher than average salaries regardless of where they're employed. There appears to be zero effort to verify that the specific positions called out are actually above true market value.

Large corporations try to create a sufficient number of job classifications to cover the range of positions that exist but usually fail. Consider the athletic department positions. It's common knowledge that big time college athletics command big time salaries. Has any attempt been made to determine where Paul Federici's or Gene Taylor's salaries fall when compared to other Big 10 universities? Is the university prepared to have the Iowa athletic program, which is completely self-sufficient, take a step backward in performance and, as a result, a possible drop in the revenue that keeps it so?

Similarly, in academics, it's entirely possible that a department may have a 'flagship” professor with credentials that are beyond what was foreseen when pay grades were created. Trying to pigeonhole them into existing salary bands or position titles/salaries simply does not work.

The University of Iowa is a flagship school for the state of Iowa. Do we want to lose the unique and highly credentialed staff that set it apart from other smaller, less prestigious schools?

John Woodward

Iowa City