[Vision2020] 4th-highest salaried college president on medical leave

[Kenneth Marcy]

  At WSU, superstar president has fourth-highest salary for nation’s 
public colleges

He is now on medical leave; he will receive cancer treatment for colon 
cancer.

*http://tinyurl.com/nguytxr*

Washington State University President Elson Floyd is one of the 
highest-paid public-college presidents in the country, and the 
institution’s regents say he’s worth it.
By Katherine Long <http://www.seattletimes.com/author/katherine-long/>
Seattle Times higher education reporter

Washington State University President Elson Floyd is the 
fourth-highest-paid public-college president in the nation, according to 
new data <http://www.chronicle.com/compensation> released Sunday by The 
Chronicle of Higher Education.

And worth every penny, says Mike Worthy, former chair and member of 
WSU’s Board of Regents.

Floyd, 59, has served as president of WSU for eight years — longer than 
any of the other university presidents currently in office at Washington 
schools.

He is now on medical leave, according to a Friday announcement from the 
WSU Board of Regents. The university released few details, other than 
that he will receive cancer treatment. The Spokesman-Review of Spokane 
reported that he has colon cancer.

Some people who talked with him Friday said Floyd is optimistic about 
recovery.

Floyd made $877,250 in 2014, including deferred compensation of 
$152,250, which he received in 2014. When only base salary is taken into 
account, Floyd’s base of $725,000 was the second-highest among 
presidents of the nation’s public colleges in 2014, according to The 
Chronicle.

“We absolutely think his salary is appropriate,” Worthy said. “For the 
record, today or any other day, there has never been a more impactful 
president at WSU than Elson Floyd.”

He is the highest-paid university president in Washington state, as 
well, making more in 2014 than the UW’s former president, Michael Young, 
or the UW’s current interim president, Ana Mari Cauce.

Worthy said Floyd has racked up an impressive list of achievements since 
he started the job in 2007. For example, WSU enrollment has grown by 17 
percent under Floyd’s tenure, and the percentage of students of color 
has grown from 14 percent in 2007 to 26.5 percent in 2014.

“We’re starting to look much more like the population of our state, 
which, in our view, has consistently been the objective,” Worthy said.

Among Floyd’s other achievements: Tripling the amount of money WSU 
receives in research grants, to $600 million a year, and completing 30 
construction projects across WSU’s four campuses (Pullman, Spokane, 
Vancouver and the Tri-Cities).

This year, he worked to create bipartisan support for a bill that allows 
WSU to start a new medical school at WSU’s branch campus in Spokane.

Floyd makes significantly more than the typical public-college 
president, who earned just over $428,250 in the 2014 fiscal year, said 
Chronicle database reporter Sandhya Kambhampati.

“When we’ve spoken to boards of trustees, they tell us there’s a finite 
number of people for these positions, and in order to retain these 
presidents they will pay what it takes,” she said.

The Chronicle found that, on average, presidential pay increased 7 
percent between 2013 and 2014.

Kambhampati noted that in recent years, Floyd has consistently been in 
the top-20 of highest paid public-college presidents. For example, Floyd 
was the third-highest-paid college president in 2012 — the year that he 
earned a $500,000 deferred- compensation payment in addition to his base 
pay.

During the recession and its aftermath — between January 2009 and 
December 2012 — Floyd voluntarily reduced his own salary by $100,000 a 
year. He described it as a case of leading by example, at a time when 
faculty salaries were frozen, programs were being cut and tuition was 
growing by double-digit percentages.

More recently, in 2014, Floyd’s contract was extended by seven years — 
an idea that he himself suggested, after he told the board he had a lot 
of work he wanted to accomplish at WSU and intended to stay until he 
retired.

Last month, WSU regents voted to increase Floyd’s base salary by 6.9 
percent, bringing it to $775,025. It was the first increase to his base 
pay that Floyd had received since 2008.

Worthy said Floyd managed the university’s budget so skillfully during 
the recession that he was able to find money to raise faculty and staff 
salaries two times in recent years, for total increases of 8 percent. 
During those times, he told the regents he did not want a raise himself.

Worthy said WSU has been bullish on Floyd’s salary because top-tier 
presidents of public universities are often wooed away by private 
schools who can offer triple the compensation. Floyd “would get constant 
contacts from across the country … and yet he consistently confirmed his 
commitment to WSU.”

Floyd’s starting salary at WSU was $600,000, but Worthy said regents 
quickly came to believe they’d hired a superstar — and needed to pay him 
accordingly.

Ana Mari Cauce is receiving $524,784 while she serves as interim UW 
president.

Cauce’s predecessor, Michael Young, made a base salary of $622,008, 
which made him the 28th highest-paid public-university president in 
2014, according to the Chronicle’s data — although Young would have 
collected nearly $1 million in deferred compensation if he had remained 
at the UW for another year.

Because the Chronicle data lags current figures by a year, it doesn’t 
reflect how Young, now president of Texas A&M University, is doing 
today. Down in Texas, he’s making a $1 million base salary and $200,000 
annually in deferred compensation. He also received an $800,000 signing 
bonus and is eligible for other bonuses.

*http://tinyurl.com/nguytxr
*

*
Ken

*


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20150608/3e54d951/attachment.html>