Last year, when organizers from USLAC (the United Student-Labor Action Coalition) convinced the WSA to pass a resolution in favor of raising the minimum wage for student workers to $15 an hour, the response from the administration was mixed.
Micheal Roth, while appearing to sympathize with the progressive element of the student body, declared, “We don’t want to just charge more tuition to raise the minimum wage.”
The specter of tuition increases is one that university administrators have begun to invoke more and more frequently in the face of student demands. Even more disturbingly, many students have begun to repeat the administration’s line when changes to the university’s spending are proposed. Any time new programs are proposed, students ask “what will this mean for tuition and financial aid?” This concern is a meaningful one, and it highlights the need for activists on campus to push for structural reforms to the University that won’t force us to make the administration-approved choice between fair wages for student workers and money for financial aid.
In his book and his many articles, Micheal Roth declares that profit should not be the only motive for education. It’s a view he states eloquently. One could be forgiven, though, for observing that he has derived a good deal of profit personally from the systems of liberal education he praises. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Roth earned $735,393 in 2013, more than the presidents of several schools considered to be Wesleyan’s peers (indeed more than the President of the United States). Roth isn’t alone in taking home a giant salary.
At most universities, many deans can expect to see salaries of more than $150,000 in a year. In a world of high pay for university executives, Wesleyan is no exception. Wesleyan, like many other universities, spends an immense amount for its administration. When students parrot the administration’s claim that any new spending has to be justified against potential impacts on tuition and financial aid, we legitimize practices that deserve neither legitimacy or respect. The fact is that the distribution of money on campus is not a natural necessity as President Roth consistently implies. The work deans and other administrators do on our campus is not proportional to the compensation they receive. Perversely, students who want changes to university spending are portrayed as potentially damaging their own ability to study at Wesleyan.
Meanwhile, the school pays an administrative salary to Dean of Equity and Inclusion Antonio Farias, who implied in 2014 that students who feel the aid they receive is insufficient simply don’t understand the difference between needs and wants. What is rarely discussed seriously is the question of why Farias himself is preventing money from going to financial aid or any other programs for students. The administrative bloat goes far beyond Farias and indeed beyond Micheal Roth. The two are as much products as they are causes. They are examples that highlight the problems with the structure of the university.
It makes sense that Micheal Roth and the Board of Trustees believe that their particular choices about spending and salaries are the only ones that make sense. The responsibility students have is to change their minds or remove them from their positions. The question of executive pay gets at a fundamental question: What is our university for? Use of the term “community” is deceptive when it lumps together mistreated university workers and the administrators who feign an incapacity to improve their situation.
If we are to build a real community, our university cannot exist to enrich administrators. It must exist to provide students with the kind of education Micheal Roth writes about so frequently. It is also a source of income for hundreds of workers, most more vital than our administrators to its functions, who have little say in how it is run. It is not enough, of course, to simply say that current levels of administrative pay are too high. We should develop and propose an alternative vision of the university.
A good place to start would be a consideration of the role professors play in the University’s governance. Professors exist today largely under the direction of deans and administrators. Currently, many academic decisions are made by administrators with little experience instructing students or engaging in independent scholarship. Many of the roles currently filled by highly-paid deans are fundamentally academic and should be, even regardless of the question of pay, under the control of the people who make academic life at the University possible. Similarly, janitorial and dining workers should have a say in how the school is run. Their stake in it is at least as large as anyone else’s. Students should demand that academic departments and workers’ unions be given more power in governance of the administration.
This letter is not a complete plan. Changing the structure of the university will require agitation by everyone concerned about its future. That agitation, which must include the voices of everyone concerned with the University’s future, can produce a plan far more comprehensive than anything I can come up with. Demanding that President Roth take the problem of administrative pay seriously is a good starting point. Rather than being divided by the false assumption that the University currently dispenses funds as efficiently as possible, we should demand that cuts to administrative salaries come before cuts to student services or staff and professorial salaries. The administrative line, often repeated by students, that changes to how the University funds other programs will take money away financial aid shows exactly why activists should package immediate demands with the larger goal of changing how the University governs itself and distributes its funds. As we begin this school year, we should recognize that the way the University is run right now is not natural or necessary. It is a problem that must be solved.
16 Comments
GD Klein
Dr. Roth is way overpaid by any standards. Given the deterioration of Wesleyan’s global standing, rankings, and retreat compared to peer institutions during the last eight years,he should return at least 60% of what he received to Wesleyan.
A review of performance and a restructuring of Wesleyan is long overdue. To achieve that restructuring requires a change of leadership for which the Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees appears too anemic to address. It is time for a change.
George Devries Klein ’54, PhD, PG, FGSA
Alum90
Wesleyan just completed its best fund raising campaign ever in its history. Roth is recognized nationally as an outspoken proponent of liberal education. Arguably he is not paid enough! You have a myopic view of what a modern executive can earn in the private sector. When ex-President Cambell left Wesleyan for Rockefeller Brothers Foundation he more than tripled his salary. I am sure Roth could earn much more than he does at Wesleyan if he were to go elsewhere. He is passionate about the school and believes in its mission. Moreover he has been very successful in materially increasing the school’s endowment. No… we should be grateful for Roth’s leadership and pay him more!
GD Klein
Please be sure to encourage Mr.Roth to follow ex-President’s Campbell’s departure from Wesleyan and do it soon. Wesleyan will be better off for it.
George Devries Klein, ’54, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign
Ralphiec88
Please save this article for a day when you can look back in wonder at the arrogance of someone with two years of college under his belt believing he knows how Wesleyan can be “restructured”.
There are small sparks of potentially important questions here, but they are more likely to be kindled into usefulness if they are introduced with a willingness to listen and the humility to learn.
Alec Shea
It’s hard to see the massive increases in administrative pay coupled with reduction in the power of academic departments and professors that has taken place over the last 30 years as anything but a restructuring. So it isn’t too crazy to believe that the university’s structure can be changed. It has been changed many times before.
Ralphiec88
Are there really “massive increases” when compared in constant dollars? Whether Ross is right for Wes (I don’t believe so) or not, competent managers for any multimillion dollar operation with hundreds of employees don’t come cheap.
You get even further out of your depth when you make statements about the qualifications required, and the notion that students have a “responsibility ” to “remove [administrators] from their positions” is pure hubris.
Alec Shea
In constant dollar terms there have been significant increases (it is, of course, notable that most workers in this country have seen reductions in their wages in real terms during the same period). I believe (you may not), that the faculty could manage the school democratically with far less administrative overhead than exists right now. As for removing administrators from their positions, I stand by that. If people are being paid too much to do nothing, students and campus workers should organize around making them useful or getting rid of them. As for hubris, it seems far more hubristic to believe that “competent managers for any multimillion dollar operation with hundreds of employees don’t come cheap” when the school severely lacks competent managers than to imagine that it’s possible to change the way the school runs. Paying them millions of dollars hasn’t made them competent. Subjecting them to more democratic control (rather than hoping some out of touch board members will improve the situation for us) is the best chance we have.
Ralphiec88
And now the straw men come out. I clearly did not suggest high salaries guarantee competence, only that your goal of redistributing salaries has potential negative consequences for the goals you claim to seek.
alum
Because Wes has a smaller endowment than peer schools, in order to maintain financial aid, Wes has pared down its administrative budget. The overhead has already been decreased. NESCAC presidents make 6 figures, that’s the market rate.
alum
Wesleyan actually spends proportionately less on administrative salaries than its peer schools (this info is available in financial reports). Sure, Roth makes more than most other NESCAC presidents, but Wes is also larger and has more grad programs than those schools. He’s also been at Wes longer than most other NESCAC presidents.
Alec Shea
If administrators are going to constantly threaten that any increase in services to students will reduce the financial aid budget, their salaries, whether they’re in line with other NESCAC schools or not, should be immediately called into question. Many deans could be replaced by professors (that would also be better for our academic departments). Much of the work deans do is useless. It’s time to face that fact.
Wes '85
While I think it is always healthy to think about other ways to do thing, doing things differently doesn’t guarantee that things will be done better. If faculty are busy collectively making decisions for the school, then who will be teaching their classes. Presumably, more would have to be hired, then up goes cost. Janitorial and dining workers should have a say in how the school is run? Do you mean on how dining and custodial services are managed or do you think their should be equal input on IT infrastructure, endowment investment strategy, and capital expenses? If so, then how many more workers would need to be hired to cover the time away from normal duties? How would these increases be paid? You have every right to say you don’t like a situation and would like it to change, but then putting forth some ideas that could be described as comical, and trying to protect those ideas by saying “this is not a complete plan” is weak.
Alec Shea
The fact that you see giving people whose lives are governed by the university a say in how its run as “comical” is probably a bad thing. As someone who studied at Wesleyan, I’m sure you know that governing institutions can work through delegation and representation so workers could (for example) elect representatives to serve in the various institutions that govern the school. Professors could elect their deans. Since your main concern seems to be about lost time, representation seems like a perfect way of addressing it.
Wes '85
Nah. I said your ideas were comical. You apparently misread what I wrote. The idea of representation is good. I assume you are saying that from your analysis there is a significant proportion of faculty, and kitchen workers who are competent in investment policy? or are you just inventing things as you go?
Alec Shea
My idea is that the people whose lives are governed by the school should have a say in how it’s run. If you think that’s comical, that’s fine (wrong, but fine). As for your argument that people have to be experts to participate in governance, I’ll make two points, the first is that you’re making a broad argument against Democracy. Your argument could apply to governments as much as it does to other institutions that govern (like our university). If you’re against democracy, that’s an interesting point of view, but I hope it isn’t really the one you hold. The idea that the current Board of directors, or Micheal Roth (both of which tend to have as much investment expertise as any kitchen worker) will appoint experts more than anyone else is one totally without basis.
GD Klein
At most universities, there exists a system of shared governance of faculty and administration. However, for a variety of reasons, this governance has been encrached upon so the sharing with faculty is less.