CSUB president gets 4 percent pay raise
Bakersfield Californian 1/25/07
President Horace Mitchell's salary will increase from $249,048 to $259,010.
The increase is retroactive to July 1, 2006.
The California State University system's board of trustees gave its 23 campus presidents, chancellor and members of the chancellor's staff a 4 percent salary adjustment.
Mitchell declined to comment about the increase, said a university spokesman.
The system says executive salaries lag those paid to 20 comparable institutions by 42 percent, according to findings presented by the Mercer Human Resource Consulting firm.
However, when benefits and perquisites are taken into account, the lag between what CSU leaders and their counterparts earn drops to about 12 percent, according to the report.
Those comparable schools include private schools such as USC and Tufts University, as well as public institutions in other states including North Carolina, New York and Georgia.
The system says the increase is necessary because recruiting and retaining key executives who are visionary leaders is critical to the system's success.
School presidents and other executives received just over a 13 percent pay raise in October 2005.
Because of that raise, Mitchell's salary went from $220,008 in 2004-05 to $249,048.
A faculty union president is concerned about the system's priorities.
"It just seems like symbolically, once again, they are sending a signal about whom they value in the CSU -- the executives, not the folks who are directly involved with students," John Travis, president of the California Faculty Association, said Tuesday.
He's a political science professor at Humboldt State University.
Travis is not against salary increases as a general principle, but it "seems to me with the (increase) in 2005-06, the executives are pretty well off. I'm not sure it's needed right now ... they need to be marshaling the resources of the institution with much more care."
The union represents 23,000 faculty at system schools.
Cal State Bakersfield's student body president is concerned about the future of higher education for California students.
A 10 percent student fee increase for the 2007-08 school year is part of the governor's budget.
"From a student perspective, especially right now, we would just wish the governor's office and the state would put higher education as their top priority," said Ken Beurmann, president of Associated Students Inc..