At SDSU, Laurie Stenberg Nichols has been making $251,000 a year. She’s leaving to preside over the University of Wyoming, which will pay her a base salary of $350,000, plus a please-stay-in-Laramie payment of $25,000.
That’s a nice step up for Dr. Stenberg Nichols, but it’s a slight step back from what she could have gotten if she had stuck around to angle for SDSU President David Chicoine’s job, which currently pays $365,204. It’s a lower salary than the president she replaces, former oil executive Dick McGinity. It’s much less than the guy before that, Bob Sternberg, received as a severance package after he quit after just five months on top of pay and benefits that beat Nichols’s contact.
The Casper Star Tribune notes that Wyoming is ten cents worse than the rest of the nation in gender-pay inequity. But incoming President Nichols isn’t complaining:
The comparative salaries of former presidents was not Nichols’ concern, she said.
“I would just say that I’m very pleased with the offer,” Nichols said. “I think it’s a very competitive offer, regardless of what was paid before me” [Heather Richards, “New UW President Will Be Paid Far Less than Sternberg,” Casper Star Tribune, 2015.12.23].
The UW Board of Trustees assures us they aren’t stiffing Nichols’s ladyship:
The UW board of trustees chose Nichols on Friday from a pool of three finalists. The board used a committee to set salary and compensation parameters, based on comparable institutions in other states, before the finalists were chosen, said board member Michelle Sullivan.
“This was before we brought anybody in,” she said. “We tried to really be systematic, to make sure all the trustees were comfortable ahead of time so there were no surprises” [Richards, 2015.12.23].
R.C. Johnson, president of the Wyoming AAUW, says these ladies ought to be a bit crankier:
Johnson also questioned how the committee decided on the comparable pay rate.
“Even if they had that comparison from across states to decide that you are going to offer the lower-paid package to this woman, they ought to be paying her more, because she is going to have to go up against some pretty heady opposition as she moves forward in this state,” she said [Richards, 2015.12.23].
…while UW economist Anne Alexander (who also happens to be a lady) shrugs off the difference:
“What she was making as provost, (at South Dakota State University), that’s probably more her baseline,” Alexander said. “I’m sure she did her homework too, to figure out what UW normally pays its president.”
Land-grant universities like UW often have lower salaries than their private counterparts, she added [Richards, 2015.12.23].
We can debate whether Nichols is getting a bum deal (though you’d have to pay me more than $350,000 to get me to trade South Dakota for Wyoming). But I suspect that Wyoming could afford a little more for their university president. They run one university, in Laramie. They pay one president at that land grant university. South Dakota has one land grant university and pays its president $15K more in base salary than Wyoming will pay Nichols. But South Dakota has five other Regental campuses, each with its own president. Where Wyoming pays one top higher education executive $350,000, we pay six higher ed chiefs $1.8 million. Hmm… appoint one superintendent for the entire Regental system, lop off the heads at each campus, appoint the VPs Academic as campus principals, and we might save over a million dollars, or $50 per student.
Or Wyoming could offer a presidential candidate from South Dakota $500,000 and still be enjoying a huge advantage in administrative overhead over its easterly neighbor.
Here’s more:
http://www.laramieboomerang.com/news/local_news/article_e01246a0-a936-11e5-85e8-d386ac363a1d.html
Horsefeathers. No public university administrator or coach should ever receive more than a brigadier general – for the university clan accomplish far less work, their work is far less vital, their work is essentially free of personal risk and risk to those they serve. Cap it all in line with the public salaries for brigadiers – a respectable $167k+/- with allowances. One beauty of the federal pay scale is being gender/race/religion neutral.
Institution makes offer and candidate accepts offer. End of story.
One statewide regental university head? I thought that we had that years ago when Janklow had an all USD alum Board of Regents?
i’d move to wyo in a heart beat, I have in the past; the new provost Nichols wants to hire, not sure what that is but I like how CEOs, SOS ect. gotta have a competent woman/man Friday to do the real work so the exec can travel the world. I learned from Jane Fonda last night not to be so cynical in aging. :)
UW is cool, no doubt a real University in comparison to SD but the politics might even be worse. is Nichols a repub?
Cory, your comment that “you’d have to pay me more than $350,000 to get me to trade South Dakota for Wyoming” reminded me of an old story.
A fellow walks up to an attractive gal sitting at the bar and asks if she would be willing to sleep with him for a $1 million. She said sure. He said, would you sleep with me for $2? She said, what do you think I am? He said, we have already established that, now we are just negotiating on the price.
Executive salaries are to high now days. Lower what the men got to what the women get and all should be paid well and happy.
Roger! With that combination of gender fairness and fiscal conservatism, you could run for Governor. :-)
BCB: Ha! :-D
John: Brigadier general pay? Have those generals gotten rid of ISIS yet? If we want to get really gnarly, I know some teachers who are doing more to fight poverty, crime, and radicalization than anybody wearing stars. ;-)
Sorry Cory, teachers sleep in sheets every night, don’t dodge IEDs enroute to work, and don’t use the false logic the generals (or teachers) are responsible for flawed policy. If universities paid $167k +/- the lines for those jobs (“president”, coach, et al.) would still stretch around the block, down the street, and then some. While those jobs provide an important service, those jobs presently are vastly over-compensated at taxpayer expense. My corporal grandfather faced far greater threats on WWI battlefields than he ever did pounding school bullies when a rural school principal or superintendent, or in the more refined debating air later of being a professor, then university department head. Perhaps if the US had the world’s leading educational system and outputs, then one m i g h t make an argument for lavish out-sized salaries – but since the US education system and state universities are mediocre on the world stage we should keep those taxpayer-funded salaries in check. I’m all for a living wage for contact teachers – but not a lavish wage for university “presidents”, coaches, etc.
If sheets and bullets are among our pay criteria, John, then the max pay threshold shouldn’t be brigadier general pay; it should be private and corporal pay.
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/communities/ellsworth/af-announces-fy-aviator-bonuses-rpa-pilots-eligible-for-first/article_b22aa66e-4d8b-5af7-b741-061032c90b9d.html
You’ve got to be kidding! I’d trade South Dakota to be in Wyoming anyday.