BuckeyeBlog

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Ohio State University administrators won’t get a raise this year. Don’t worry about how they will pay their bills, though. Your tax and tuition dollars are funding some pretty lavish salaries even without any raises or bonuses this year. As the Plain Dealer reported, 288 OSU staff make over $200,000 a year. The Provost makes a base salary of $500,000. As the Buckeye Institute noted earlier this year, the total compensation package for the university president is between $1.6 and $2 million.

I find it interesting that with all the attention on CEO salaries we are not seeing more attention on the salaries of higher education administrators. After all, CEOs work for private companies and are paid for out of business revenue (that is, until they become welfare recipients by signing up for federal bailout funds). There really is no public policy rationale in capping their salaries besides pure envy. Higher education administrators, at least the ones at public universities, are being paid for, in large part, by your tax dollars. Where are the Congressional hearings on this issue?

To see how much the top OSU employees are making, the Buckeye Institute has a searchable database here.

Question: Shouldn’t President Obama’s order limiting CEO pay for companies that receive federal dollars apply to all who sit atop institutions getting fat federal checks?  Such as OSU President Gordon Gee, who is reported to be receiving some $2 million in pay this year?     

Afterall, it looks like OSU is getting at least $2 billion in federal tax dollars each year. See here. 

TOPIC FOR ANOTHER DAY: I spent some 30 minutes this morning googling and digging around OSU’s site looking in vain for the amount of federal dollars received by the University.  A pretty simple question that any taxpayer deserves to be able to answer with less effort than this.  Then I googled “US Government spending” and found an answer within 30 seconds.  Maybe it was me that just stumbled on the right search.  Or maybe it’s more systematic. My grades: Fed spending transparency gets an ‘A’, OSU transparency gets an ‘F’ (or whatever it is they give for a failing grade today).