Faculty Senate Meeting Discusses Salaries

By Connect Mason News Director Elizabeth Stern

Faculty senate members attended a special meeting on Feb. 6, to discuss matters related to “low faculty salaries; faculty salaries relative to administrative salaries; the use of indirect money from research grants, disappointing fundraising outcomes; and support for research activity and graduate students,” as listed in the meeting agenda.

About 2,360 faculty and 3,950 staff at Mason currently live and work in one of the highest cost of living locations in the United States. Fairfax County is the richest in the country, second to Loudoun County, where George Mason University operates a satellite campus. Out of UVA, VCU, William & Mary, ODU and Virginia Tech, Mason has some of the lowest-paid professors.

With one of the lowest endowments of Mason’s SCHEV-approved peer public institutions, approximately $54.7 million, the university also has one of the highest-paid presidents.

Based on data from 2006-07, the mean compensation among peer institutions is $448,500. Merten, who does not pay for his house or car, receives a total of $642,500, second only to Georgia State University’s president by about $50,000. Georgia State has an endowment that exceeds Mason’s by almost 200 percent. Merten is among the top 10 percent highest-paid presidents among 182 public research universities. Head Coach for the Men’s Basketball team Jim Larranaga is paid a higher salary than Merten, not including total compensation.

According to the Mason Factbook, full-time instructional faculty has grown a third since 1996, while administration has expanded 100 percent.

While Senate member Richard Coffinberger noted that this was “a good thing,” he expressed concern about how Mason would be able to pay decent salaries for faculty and administration.

A three percent raise might be effective by July of 2009. However, it is not guaranteed.

Senate member James Bennett noted that it would take $1.2 to $1.3 million to increase the salaries of 1,900 administrative teaching faculty by one percent.

“There’s no public funding, it’s going to get worse with the economy imploding, and no private money... it’s coming from the students and the money that they’re paying for tuition” Bennett said. “All of us want to be at a world-class university... the state is continuing to back away from higher education.”

The state is not the only source appearing to be stingy with funding. Bennett brought up the example of a presentation given last week by College of Health and Human Sciences Dean Shirley Travis which outlined a need for $34 million for the nursing program.

“There’s a huge shortage of nurses in Virginia and the nation,” Bennett said, adding that, when presented with the information, Merten “didn’t mention money” at all.

Over 10 years, Mason’s endowment has seen a total increase of $36.8 million. According to Bennett, when Merten spoke in a previous senate meeting, Merten explained that Mason’s endowment was doing well compared to other “young” universities. Bennett showed information from 11 other institutes who opened their doors either around Mason’s birth year of 1957 or afterward. Of all of them, Mason had the second lowest endowment while most universities had endowments exceeding Mason’s by more than double the amount. The University of South Florida, which opened three years after Mason, has an endowment more than seven times bigger than Mason’s.

Bennett stressed that Mason should use its reputation of being “young” to its advantage for funding. “I think one of our greatest selling points is, ‘Look, we’re young!’”

Bennett showed information that made apparent a poor and lack of activity on the parts of development officers who are supposed to raise funds for each department within the university. It turns out that “Mason faculty are bringing in more than half the university’s donations.”

“Why are our results disappearing?” Bennett asked. “If we’re going to be a great university, it’s going to take some financial support.”

Concern was also raised by faculty about not being able to obtain information about the salaries of other faculty and administration members, because Human Resources pays dues through state funding to operate a database through CUPA. Though salary information should be publicly accessible because of the Freedom of Information Act, Senate member David Kuebrich stated his belief that making the public information private was an internal administrative decision.

Kuebrich added that a solution to low salaries could be to encourage the university to “create new, expensive programs” or “expensive enhancements” to existing programs.

Coffinberger noted that, according to Newsweek, the top public research institutions included UC Berkeley, UVA, UCLA and University of MI-Ann Arbor. Coffinberger said that Mason was just below UMI-AA, but still had not broken the top four. In Virginia, Mason is the most expensive public school, even next to UVA and with proposals to make Mason “green,” costs will likely rise higher.

Coffinberger pointedly asked, “Are we getting our money’s worth?”

Take a look at what Mason faculty and staff make here.