Temple University’s top administrators are receiving pay packages – including salaries, extra pay and bonuses – ranging from under $200,000 to nearly $500,000. These compensation packages reflect a trend that has emerged at large universities over the past 10 years.
In addition to salaries, these top 12 administrators, called officers, receive additional pay to cover the cost of travel, cars and their children’s tuition. Many of the officers also received bonuses at the end of last year equal to 6 to 10 percent of their salaries. Bonuses for this year have not been determined.
The Temple News recently reviewed the university’s board of trustees records, which showed the officers each received a 3 percent raise for the 2003-2004 academic year. This is the same rate that AFSCME, the Temple union that represents the university’s office workers and lab assistants, recently negotiated in their new contract.
Temple President David Adamany – whose salary is $410,170 this year – said the university has to be “quite competitive” in pay packages to recruit administrators.
Adamany is also receiving $69,000 in other pay this year, bringing his total pay to $479,170. Other officers receive additional pay ranging from $6,000 to $51,000 (see article, page 6).
The salaries of presidents at large universities that receive public funding have risen in recent years because of competition in recruiting top administrators, said Julianne Basinger, a reporter who covers university salaries at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
“Public university presidents’ salaries have only started to skyrocket in the last three or four years,” she said. “The big research universities are competing for people when it comes to hiring.”
Over the past four years, tuition has risen 18 percent for Temple’s undergraduate students who are Pennsylvania residents, from $6,648 in 2000 to $8,134 this year. Tuition for out of-state students rose 19 percent, from $12,022 to $14,894, over the same period.
During those four years, Adamany’s salary increased 11.2 percent, from a base of $368,725 in 2000 to $410,170 this year. He has also received two 7 percent bonuses, one for the 2000-2001 academic year for $25,000 and one for 2002-2003, for $27,786.
Other officers who have worked here over those four years have received total salary increases of 10 to 12 percent. Bonuses of 6 to 10 percent have been given each year.
Adamany said he and the board of trustees sets salaries so Temple is in the top 25 percent of what similar large urban universities are paying their officers. He added that because the cost of living is higher in Philadelphia than in many parts of the country, Temple needed to offer more compensation to lure administrators from regions where cost of living is lower.
Adamany is not the highest-paid Temple employee. The top five highest-paid employees in 2001 other than officers are doctors or professors at Temple Hospital, according to the university’s tax filing for that year, the most recent available. All five had salaries of more than $495,000. The highest-paid was Raj K. Narayan, a neurosurgeon who received $664,824. Information on other pay was unavailable.
Leon Malmud, who was the head of the Temple University Health System until 2001, had total compensation of $892,431 during that year, according to board of trustees records. The salary of Joseph Marshall, Malmud’s successor, was not listed in more recent board of trustees records.
Another component of the officers’ total compensation is listed in board of trustees records as “other pay.” In the past, board of trustees records broke down this pay into specific items, such as travel supplements, auto allowances and tuition aid. These figures were last broken down by board of trustees records in June 2000.
But Adamany said the other pay items “are still in place.”
He said the board of trustees stopped providing a breakdown of the figures because this other pay is being treated as a whole, rather than separate supplements for specific purposes. Adamany said this is because the university is focusing on total pay packages for officers when setting salaries and other pay, rather than individual perks.
In fact, even when the other pay was broken down, the money did not have to be used for its stated purpose, according to Martin Dorph, Temple’s chief financial officer and treasurer. Most of the other pay was listed with the words “or supplement,” meaning it was discretionary and did not have to be used for the stated expense.
“This money is paid out whether or not the specific purpose is met,” Dorph said. “It means that you get the money whether you need it for the tuition or not.”
For example, in 2000, part of University Counsel George Moore’s other pay was $15,000 for dependent tuition or supplement. This $15,000 was broken into monthly payments and simply included in Moore’s paycheck.
All of the officers received at least a $6,000 per year car allowance. Adamany’s car allowance was set at $9,000. He also has a university car at his disposal.
Another component of Adamany’s pay listed in the 2000 board records was a $25,000 supplement to help pay for housing. Adamany currently lives in a condominium on Rittenhouse Square that the university purchased in 2001 for $1.25 million. The $25,000 is less than what he is estimated to be paying the university in rent for the condo.
He pays an estimated $5,250 a month in rent to the university for the condo. University officials said this payment is to cover the costs of the condo, including condo fees and real estate taxes, as well as an additional $2,375 a month.
City tax records and interviews with real estate agents show the tax on the condo is $1,272 a month and condo fees are about $1,600. This adds up to about $5,250 monthly bill for Adamany, or around $63,000 per year.
Both university officials and Adamany have declined to provide a breakdown of what Adamany is paying, but did not dispute the monthly rent figure.
Dorph said Adamany’s rent consisted “primarily” of the $2,375 plus the taxes and fees. It is unclear if there are other costs or exactly what Adamany is paying.
The board of trustees records show the other pay received by each officer has not changed much over the past four years, with three exceptions.
Adamany’s increased from $64,000 to $69,000 in 2001. Also in 2001, Thomas Maxey, the vice president for enrollment management had a $3,000 boost in other pay; Robert Reinstein, the dean of the law school, had a $1,000 increase in other pay that year.
Adamany said the system of breaking down the other pay into components like travel supplements was “obsolete,” but the other pay was needed to create competitive pay packages.
He said this pay was not being folded into salaries because raises would then cost more (other pay is not affected by raises). Adamany said this placed the officers in a situation in which their 3 percent raises did not reflect the total of their compensation.
“We are the only employees at Temple who are in that situation,” he said.
But 10 of the 12 officers received bonuses last year ranging from 6 to 10 percent of their salaries for the 2002-2003 academic year, according to the board of trustees records. These bonuses vary from year to year in both amount and in who receives them, board of trustees records show.
Adamany received the highest bonus, $27,876, which was 7 percent of his 2002-2003 salary. Timothy O’Rourke, the vice president for computer services, received a 10 percent ($24,400) bonus, the highest percentage given last year.
Officers’ bonuses for the 2002-2003 academic year totaled $188,988.
The bonuses, called one-time supplements, are recommended by Adamany and approved by the board of trustees. The president does not recommend his own bonus, which is set by the board.
Adamany said he bases the bonuses on three criteria: performance on stated goals, how well officers dealt with unexpected issues during the year and the quality of employees recruited by the officers.
“I have used the supplements to recognize strong performance,” Adamany said.
At the University of Pittsburgh – which is a state-related university with similar enrollment to Temple – officers with responsibilities similar to their counterparts at Temple also receive similar though slightly lower salaries. Information on bonuses and additional pay for Pitt was not available.
Pitt has a system of a chancellor and vice chancellors equivalent to Temple’s president and vice presidents. Pitt’s chancellor, Mark Nordenberg, has a salary of $401,500 this year. Pitt’s officers also received raises around 3 percent this year.
Tuition at Pitt has increased faster over the past three years than Temple’s has in four. Since 2001, tuition for in-state students has risen 25 percent; out-of-state tuition has risen 18 percent. Temple tuition has increased 18 percent for Pennsylvania residents and 19 percent for out-of-state students since 2000.
Brian White can be reached at zapata@temple.edu.
Be the first to comment