College presidents make a play to overpay themselves

Seven could see raises of 40 per cent: union

Ontario’s utilitarian colleges have always resented their second-class status as the little brothers of high-class universities. They live in the shadow of big brother’s better-known campuses, better-educated students, betterpaid staff. Until now. If you can’t beat them, out-pay them … or more precisely, pay yourselves more!

Ontario’s 24 colleges have quietly found a way to one-up their university rivals by boosting their presidential pay packets by as much as 55 per cent.

All this at a time government claims to be driving greater efficiencies in higher education, with “mandate agreements” to reduce wasteful rivalries among schools. Tuition hikes have been limited to three per cent, as colleges claim they now receive less funding per student than other provinces.

Next fall, when the current contract for faculty expires, how will college presidents keep a straight face when they come to the bargaining table demanding restraint?

It’s not merely the money, but the proposed way they pay themselves that has stoked outrage among college professors who teach business and economics.

It’s the gamification of compensation by high flyers, with help from the enablers on their boards.

George Brown College proposes boosting presidential pay from $359,000 to $494,000, a handsome hike of $135,000, or 38 per cent.

Mohawk’s president could win a 54-percent raise. Other colleges have arrived at the same target salary of just under a half-million dollars a year.

With executive pay frozen since 2012, Queen’s Park was looking for a sensible way to unfreeze salaries … without overheating them. Under new rules, public servants must prove their case by looking at how others are paid for similar work.

How did colleges comply with the call for “appropriate comparators?” By cherrypicking their points of comparison for compensation.

They cited sprawling organizations such as Pearson airport, the LCBO and major hospitals, whose executives preside over tens of thousands of employees and oversee complex delivery systems with high stakes.

To put this in perspective, if a college president is asleep on the job, perched in his ivory tower, airplanes won’t crash and people won’t die.

If they get their way, some college presidents would earn more than their university rivals, triggering another round of catch-up in an endless round of salary escalation.

That’s how it works in the private sector, which has propagated the myth of excessive compensation inflation for retention of successive CEOs.

Strange how the pay-raise arms race hasn’t stopped top executives from defecting to competing organizations, but has succeeded only in opening a growing gap in wage scales within the same organization ... which should count for at least as much.

The claim that hospital CEOs and college presidents would be poached if underpaid is not only an untested hypothesis, but hoary hyperbole.

Where is the evidence that they are easy prey for foreign recruiters?

Isn’t there an ethic of public service at play with executive pay, given the opportunities for personal advancement and career satisfaction when doing God’s work?

Are they motivated by the same baselines — base pay and perks — as mining CEOs and tobacco executives?

OPSEU president Warren (Smokey) Thomas, whose union represents college teachers, notes that seven presidents would be eligible for increases of more than 40 per cent while faculty jobs go unfilled and parttime lecturers are nickel and dimed.

Ultimately, students pay the price in reduced access to quality education. And we will all gain an unhelpful lesson in how our top educators game the system: Do as they say, never mind their pay.

Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears in Torstar newspapers.