[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rotVhKXdf3Y]

In an interview with the student newspaper at Humboldt State during his recent visit CSU Chancellor Charlie Reed became irate when a student reporter asked him about the recent $100,000 raise for the new San Diego State University president. The question comes at about 4:35 of the video.

He tries to pin the public reaction on inaccurate media reportage (a common trick for politicos). “They never want to get anything right!” he yells, turning a special color of red. “Nobody has written the truth about that” he complains. Well, he is simply wrong.

He complains that the raise only involves $50,000 in state money. The other $50,000 comes from the SDSU Foundation. I am yet to read a story that does not explain that point. Critics of the raise, including myself, simply wonder whether a pay increase of any size, from any source, communicates “shared sacrifice.”

He then claims that the President of SDSU had not received a raise in “five years.” This is true. But between 2006 and 2007 the president received a $27,000 raise from 272,000 to $299,000.  Faculty in the CSU have not received a raise in four years and, given that the Chancellor is offering nothing for the next three either, we can count on no pay raise for seven years! Excuse me if I do not feel sorry for someone who already made more about four  times what the average faculty member makes.

Furthermore that $299,000 does not include the car and housing allowance that the president receives. As I like to point out my mortgage and car payments are the two biggest bills I pay every month. If someone else was paying those bills for me I would be pretty well off.

He concludes his rant by saying:

Students, faculty, staff, and community deserve the very best leadership I can possibly find, and you’re not going to get that for nothin’.

Stop me if I am wrong, but $299,000 is not “nothing” — that is more than a good living, especially when someone else is paying the two major bills that most households pay. If $299,000 is “nothing” then faculty are, on average, being paid about one-quarter of nothing.

The fact is that the compensation of CSU presidents is nowhere near as bleak as the Chancellor claims. His own consultants concluded that total compensation for CSU presidents is only 25% below market in our peer group (that’s not what he says in the interview–listen to him carefully).

If only the Chancellor could summon the same passion about how faculty, staff, and students have sacrificed. But he can’t.  While all the rest of us have suffered for the cause the top leadership in the CSU has feathered its nest very nicely indeed.