University of North Carolina employee salaries “are beyond the pale.” Jesse Saffron and Jenna Robinson of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy reach that conclusion in a newly released analysis.
The average annual income in North Carolina is just over $40,000. But senior-level bureaucrats in the University of North Carolina system’s General Administration (GA)—who take home six-figure salaries—say they need a raise. This Friday, the system’s Board of Governors will vote on a proposed salary range increase that will “assure that [UNC] has the ability to match and, when necessary, lead market in compensating hard to recruit or retain executive talent.”
The increases are “designed to [promote] good stewardship of State and University budgetary resources,” which certainly sounds as if system officials intend to perform the remarkable act of keeping costs low by…raising costs.
While it is not clear how the state higher education establishment’s upper crust can, in the name of fiscal prudence, ask for such raises with a straight face, it is clear that top-level employees in the GA and across the state’s 16 public universities are among the highest-paid public employees in the state.
For instance, UNC system president Thomas Ross, who heads the GA, earns $550,000 per year, $30,000 more than the chancellors at UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State University (other chancellors in the system earn between $240,000 and $325,000). The GA employs 68 people who earn more than $100,000 per year, and 8 who earn more than $200,000.
But that’s just for starters. The system’s 16 universities employ 47,894 people. Of those employees, 1,039, or 2.17 percent, earn more than $200,000 and 6,243, or 13 percent, earn more than $100,000. Compared to the rest of state government, these are astounding figures. Of the 87,364 state employees (from the departments of commerce, transportation, health and human services, and so forth), only 56, or 0.06 percent, earn more than $200,000, and just 1,900, or 2.17 percent, earn more than $100,000.
Many argue that chancellor, system administrator, and professor salaries are based on higher education’s market rates, and that if they were to be reduced, top talent would flee to other states and university systems. Let’s, for the sake of argument, ignore the steady stream of scandals and politically correct inanities emanating from some UNC campuses—which would suggest the “talent” may not be as “top” as advertised—and assume that our “public servants” in the UNC aristocracy don’t come cheap. Some other university positions, however, don’t come close to passing the smell test.
For instance, taxpayers may cringe to learn that UNC-Chapel Hill’s Chief Diversity Officer, Taffye Benson Clayton, earns $195,000 per year, or 38 percent more than Governor Pat McCrory. Clayton heads the university’s Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, which hosts campus events, diversity “training” sessions for students and faculty, and seminars, such as “Interrupting Heteronormativity in Research.” The office employs ten full-time employees as well as graduate and undergraduate staff members. Its second- and third-highest paid staffers earn $101,000 and $72,000, respectively.
A related but far more egregious example of lavish campus administration comes from North Carolina State University. Its Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity (OIED) employs 30 people. Total salary expenditures exceed $1.85 million annually. Three employees earn more than $100,000 and only 2 staffers earn less than $40,000. The office includes, among others, a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) center, a Women’s Center, and an African-American cultural center.
Like UNC-Chapel Hill’s diversity and multicultural affairs office, NC State’s OIED has a strong “social justice” emphasis. It hosts events and “educates” students and faculty via seminars, workshops, and conferences. In October, for example, the GLBT Center is hosting a workshop titled “Recognizing and Responding to Microaggressions.”
