Fighting the downsizing of education at the University of Vermont.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Charting the Spike in UVM's Executive Salary Spending

President Fogel insists that there has been no dramatic growth in top administrative salary spending during his reign, but the UVM's publicly available year-by-year listing of base salaries tells another story: Between 2003 and 2007 his administration added $3 million in salary spending for top administrators while salaries for the 700 faculty represented United Academics made only modest gains.


Click on the chart to see it in full size

Yellow Curve: Represented faculty (source: UVM Sourcebook 2008, taking the figures from 2003 to 2007 and charting the total change)

Blue Curve: From data posted on United Academics’ website on UVM Base Salaries. The group represented by the blue curve is comprised of central administrators (president, provost, vice presidents, and highly paid associate vice presidents), academic unit administrators (deans and highly paid associate deans, including the medical school), and directors who could be identified by that title in the UVM Directory (three from the Medical School, three from other units) and who received base salaries greater than $150,000 in 2007. Salary histories are then traced back as far as they appear in the data base. However, some new positions were created, and so the overall trend of the blue curve represents the combined effect of salary growth (for the top 19 positions, this growth was 38% compared to the 23% increase for represented faculty) and the increase in the number of positions (from 19 in 2003 to 30 in 2007, a 58% increase) for a combined increase of 91%. 

The sharp increase beginning between 2005 and 2006 may be attributed to the arrival of Dean Grasso of CEMS, hired at a base salary 35% higher ($206,000 a year ) than his predecessor. This appears to have triggered salary increases for other executives. These salary increases also occurred during a time when internal financial controls, by the administration’s own admission, were lacking.

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