UW System employee salaries were released last week with few surprises and the same aggravating discrepancies. Ten system employees earned over $300,000. Chancellor Biddy Martin made more than UW System President Kevin Reilly by almost $23,000, and nobody outshone Athletic Director Barry Alvarez at half a million.
Although he now occupies a more social and less rigorous role, Alvarez carries his good name deservingly to the bank. As the founder of our football success, he has an irreplaceable niche among alums as an adorable, donation-collecting teddy bear. And Martin gets a salute for bringing a woman into the top-earners mix.
But the story as this list pertains to the UW System centers on professors, few of whom can reach even half of Martin's salary. And with the state providing an ever decreasing piece of the budgetary pie, it may behoove UW administration to go after private donations to raise professor salaries.
The average salary within the UW System for professors is $73,000. The average among their peers is $87,600. A difference of nearly $15,000 is not acceptable at a university that constantly competes with the likes of Michigan and Northwestern.
Everywhere you look, you can see buildings financed with donations. Walking down University Avenue, everybody knows the story behind Brothers Bar and Grill and the construction following it down the same block. Keep walking and you can't miss Grainger Hall, where entrances are decorated with waterfalls and senatorial conference rooms. Keep walking and the list of planned or recently renovated and constructed buildings makes you proud of your campus' efforts to stay modern and hopeful that you may be part of the class able to enjoy it without running into construction (until you reach what will be the new microbial sciences building and Union Whatever a few blocks later).
But our campus, and the system as a whole, places too much emphasis on how buildings look to visitors while financially shafting those in charge of their attractive classrooms. True, it is considerably easier to raise money for a building than to fund a new professorship. But if we made even half the fundraising push to raise professor salaries as they do to create a new UW music school, at least some money would come in to ease the gap.
Wherever the money comes from, shouldn't a bigger piece of the pie go to those influencing and creating the product of this institution's greater purpose: an education? Perhaps Biddy, Barry and co. should get their very highly compensated selves in gear. Start passing the hat around for a constantly overlooked worthy cause and pay professors what they deserve.
