CUNY FUNNY MONEY
Exec raises as budgets cut, tuition hiked
The City University of New York picked the worst time to raise the salaries of its top administrators to as much as $402,700 — the same day it cut the operating budgets of its fouryear colleges and raised tuition.
The CUNY Board of Trustees, chaired by former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, authorized the salary hikes at a meeting Monday.
Senior college presidents who currently earn up to $371,460 are getting raises to as much as $402,700.
Senior VPs are going up from a top of $306,000 to $331,735. Vice presidents, deans, associate deans and assistant deans are also getting fatter paychecks.
Under the new salary structure, the maximum compensation for the CUNY chancellor was set at $724,470, unchanged from 2012, the last time the salaries were reviewed. But CUNY’s executive vice chancellor’s pay rose from a maximum of $452,640 to $490,707.
There was no discussion about the raises, which were folded into a vote covering other issues.
CUNY officials defended the salary increases as necessary to attract academic and managerial talent.
“The Board of Trustees recognizes the importance of recruiting and retaining innovative, highly competent, accountable, ethical and visionary leadership,” CUNY said in a resolution.
The CUNY board typically reviews its executive compensation plan every five years.
Last year, the university’s professors won a 10.4 percent raise retroactive to October 2010 and running through November 2017.
The raises, scheduled to take effect July 1, came as the board voted to increase tuition at the four-year colleges by $200 to $6,530 and shaved 1 percent from their operating funds. Community-college tuition remained unchanged at $4,800 a year.
Officials said that 57 percent of CUNY students qualify for grants that cover their entire tuition.
But students still booed when the tuition hike was approved.
Chika Onyejiukwa, chair of CUNY’s Student Senate, said tuition has been going up every year since 2011.
“There’s nothing normal about that,” she said, blaming the increases on the “lack of investment the state has made in CUNY.”
University spokesman Frank Sobrino said CUNY also trimmed 2 percent from central administration costs.
Gov. Cuomo is dedicating more state funds to offer Excelsior Scholarships — free tuition — to CUNY and SUNY students whose families make $100,000 or less this year.
But operating funds for the public colleges are basically flat, said Assemblywoman Deborah Glick (D-Manhattan), who chairs the Higher Education Committee.
Glick said that CUNY and SUNY face the challenge of maintaining all their course offerings while accommodating an influx of new students wooed by the free tuition.
“There needs to be more operating aid,” Glick said. “It’s going to be an interesting year or two.”