A salary increase will be recommended for California State University executives after a fifth comparison of salaries was made by the California Post-secondary Education Commission. According to the commission's report CSU executive salaries are 30.5 percent lower than other universities.
A blue-ribbon committee will make a recommendation to the CSU Board of Trustees to reduce the gap. The recommendation will suggest an average 10 percent increase on the presidential salary pool for '97-'98 academic year, and for the two years following.
Individual presidential salaries will be based on merit. Some will receive a larger increase per year and some will receive less based on performance.
It is unclear exactly where the money will come from, but Ken Swisher, director of media relations at the chancellor's office, said the salary increase is less than .01 percent of the budget.
"Presidents today are required to do fund raising," Swisher said. "They could pay for their salary increase in one day."
"The gap may be causing difficulty within the system to recruit qualified personnel," said Karl Engelbach, senior policy analyst at CPEC. Other problems include losing CSU executives to better paying jobs outside the system.
Since 1994, the average CSU presidential salary has increased by only 8.3 percent against the 27.3 percent increase for the comparison group. Compensation growth at comparable institutions continues to increase at a faster pace than CSU as well.
The average CSU presidential salary is $141,305, which is $43,000 or 30.5 percent lower than the average $184,415 presidential salary at the 20 comparable universities.
The salary comparison included 15 public and five private universities with similar commitment and mission. All offer bachelor and master degree programs and place emphasis on teacher education.
"We were interested in comparing the executive compensation of other institutions with similar commitment to the CSU system," Engelbach said. "University of California Los Angeles, for example, is not included in our comparison because its focus is research and graduate work."
Some schools included in the comparison were Arizona State University, Georgia State University, North Carolina State University, University of Colorado, Denver, Bucknell University, Loyola University (Chicago), University of California, along with 12 other schools nation-wide.
The CPEC is a state agency that provides the governor and legislature upon their request, independent, nonpartisan policy analysis recommendations on issues that affect California colleges and universities.