New president’s compensation spotlights inequities at U

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Last week the University of Minnesota Board of Regents awarded incoming President Rebecca Cunningham a generous compensation package that, at more than $1 million per year, places her in the top 25% of Big Ten leaders. Board chair Janie Mayeron, in justifying the package for Dr. Cunningham, who has no prior presidential experience, explained that it’s “a market-competitive agreement.”

Ouch.

For faculty and staff, this stings on multiple levels. For one, it exacerbates an unfortunate trend that we’ve seen in higher education more broadly: the “arms race” of ever rising administrator pay, with each new bump for one executive needing to be matched by others. At the University of Minnesota, this has resulted in the shocking reality of more than 600 administrators who are paid more than the governor, according to the Twin Cities chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Cunningham’s package will only further this trend.

For another, it highlights a bizarre feature of the administrative job market. When a faculty member retires, their replacement is typically hired at a considerably lower salary. The logic is simple: These new hires lack the experience and years of service of the more senior member they are replacing. But this doesn’t seem to be how it works with administrators. For too many of them, their starting pay matches the final compensation of those who came before them. This is the case with Cunningham, whose first-year package is “about even” with the last-year package of her predecessor, Joan Gabel.

And a third reason this news stings is that the “market-competitive” argument does not seem to apply to faculty and staff. As the administration knows (the Board of Regents annually compiles data demonstrating as much) many university faculty are significantly underpaid relative to their peers at other institutions. At the Duluth campus, where this problem is most pronounced, years of Board of Regents data show faculty earning from 85-88% of the market median.

It was not until 2021, following months of negotiations with the University of Minnesota Duluth faculty union, that the system administration finally pledged to do something about it. It refused to put a dollar amount in writing but assured the union in unambiguous terms that it was firmly committed to making UMD faculty whole.

The administration lied. Nearly three years later, not a single penny has been allocated to these market corrections. Compounding the dishonesty, the vice president for human resources has more recently intimated to the Board of Regents that the administration is working to rectify UMD’s salary problem. But the ongoing refusal to provide new funds for this purpose suggests otherwise.

We have a situation, in other words, in which the system cries austerity when it comes to the rank and file who fulfill the university’s mission but always seems able to find millions with which to compensate the top brass. This is a problem, and it’s frankly unsustainable. What will it take for the leadership of the University of Minnesota to remember that they work for a public-service institution?

Scott Laderman is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a former president of its faculty union.