U of S looking at salaries paid to top staff
The University of Saskatchewan’s president says the institution will be “seriously looking at” the salaries paid to its top administrators in the wake of a provincial budget that reduced its operating grant from the province by five per cent.
Peter Stoicheff declined to say, however, whether the university will ask members of the eight unions representing its thousands of employees to accept a pay cut similar to the 3.5 per cent reduction proposed for all government employees.
“What’s really important is trying to figure out how, of course, we can best handle the budget, and you want to send a signal from senior administration,” Stoicheff said Wednesday in an interview.
“At the same time, we have aspirations … to be one of the great universities in the country, so you do have to be careful about the kind of compensation that you offer at all levels … We want to attract and retain outstanding faculty (and) administrators.”
According to current U of S records, Stoicheff earns $420,000 annually while the university’s vice presidents — Michael Atkinson, Karen Chad, Greg Fowler and Debra Pozega Osburn — earn salaries ranging from $310,000 to $385,816.
Stoicheff, who was appointed to the university’s top job in July 2015, is paid the same as his predecessor was in 2013 — at the time the 12th highest university president salary in Canada, according to the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
The University of Regina, by comparison, pays its president an annual salary of $365,998 while its three vice-presidents earn between $247,154 and $306,848, according to data provided by a U of R spokesman.
The U of S has acted responsibly by not increasing salaries paid to its senior administrators for several years, and recent investments — such as two major Canada First Research Excellence Fund grants — suggest it is competitive, Stoicheff said.
The university responded similarly on Tuesday to a Statistics Canada report that its professors are among the highest-paid in Canada. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has said everyone paid with tax dollars should “share the burden.”
That burden is a result of the provincial government’s $1.3-billion deficit.
The 2017-18 budget — which includes cuts across a range of sectors, including universities and municipalities — aims to reduce it by about $600 million this year.
Government and opposition MLAs have already agreed to a 3.5 per cent wage reduction.
The government has proposed, subject to negotiation with various unions, a similar cut across the public sector that it expects will save around $250 million annually.
Stoicheff said the university’s plan to manage the budget cuts — many of the decisions are being left to affected colleges and programs — will be clearer when it submits to the province its operations forecast in late spring or early summer.