Paying It Forward: Why This University President Gave Up a Quarter of His Salary

As the debate over the national minimum wage rages on, one man has decided to take action on his own.
Raymond Burse, the interim president of Kentucky State University, has decided to take a $90,000 pay cut to boost the wages of the campus’s lowest-paid workers, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Burse, who was set to make $349,869, will now make $259,744 annually after the cut was approved by the school’s board of regents. According to WLKY, he said that the pay cut was “necessary since some of the employees were making as little as $7.25 an hour.”
A total of 24 employees will now earn $10.25 an hour. Their new rate will remain even after a new president takes Burse’s place.
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“This is not a publicity stunt,” Burse told the Herald-Leader. “You don’t give up $90,000 for publicity. I did this for the people. This is something I’ve been thinking about from the very beginning.”
Burse first served as Kentucky State’s president from 1982 to 1989, then became a senior executive at General Electric for 17 years before retiring in 2012 with good benefits, reports say.
Even though Burse has brushed off his generosity, other public university officials might want to take note since many of them earn abundant salaries, such as Ohio State University’s E. Gordon Gee, the top-paid public college president in the country, who makes $1.8 million annually. (Vox notes that there are a few other college presidents who, like Burse, have decided to raise the minimum worker wage on their campuses.) And according to report from TIME, from 2009 to 2012 salaries have skyrocketed: “Executive compensation at public research universities increased 14 percent to an average of $544,554, while compensation for presidents at the highest-paying universities increased by a third, to $974,006.”
Burse said, however, that his gesture wasn’t meant to urge other presidents and execs to take similar action, telling the Herald-Leader that he was merely in a position where he could spread his wealth.
“My whole thing is I don’t need to work,” he said. “This is not a hobby, but in terms of the people who do the hard work and heavy lifting, they are at the lower pay scale.”
So while Burse might not be encouraging his peers to follow his lead, we certainly hope others do.
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One Maryland College’s Bold Experiment in Capping Executive Pay

For the people at the top of the pay scale, the concept of salary caps is probably discomforting. But the idea of providing more equal wages for all employees is being debated throughout the U.S. and around the world. Last November, Swiss voters rejected an initiative that would have capped executive pay at 12 times that of the lowest-paid employees at their companies. In the U.S., tens of thousands of citizens have signed a petition demanding Congress to cap the salaries of corporate CEOs to 50 times the average worker (let’s not hold our breath on that one). And now, students and faculty members at St. Mary’s College in Maryland have proposed a plan that would limit the salary of their next president to 10 times that of the lowest-paid employees — the janitors, grounds crew workers, security officers and housekeepers, who make anywhere from $24,500 to $30,000 annually.
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St. Mary’s last president — the school currently has an interim president, Ian Newbould, while they hunt for someone permanent — made around $325,000 per year, marking a 1:13 pay ratio, according to the St. Mary’s Wages, the St. Mary’s Way website. This, of course, represents a more balanced ratio than that of America’s largest businesses, where the average pay ratio is 1:354. But as colleges continue to raise tuition and fees, which have increased 1,120 percent since 1978, and the salaries of university presidents grow, even as the pay of the average worker remains stagnant, students can’t help but wonder what, exactly, they’re paying for. At St. Mary’s, the numbers speak for themselves. According to the campaigners’ research, the salaries of St. Mary’s president and vice presidents have risen approximately 91 percent since 2000. The salaries of the lowest-paid employees have increased only 56 percent over the same time period. The pay of associate and full professors has increased at even lower rates — 29 and 22 percent, respectively. Student tuition, meanwhile, is up 60 percent.
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Under St. Mary’s proposal, which would need approval from the board of trustees in order to be implemented, the president’s pay would be cut to about $300,000 annually. Obviously, that’s no small amount of money. The hope is that the pay cap will stop the rapid growth of executive pay and save the university money, which could in turn keep tuition costs down. Beyond that, the campaigners hope a pay cap will encourage the school’s top administrator to consider the workers at the bottom of the totem pole, who anonymously told campaigners that they often struggle to make ends meet. “I have to work overtime every week, had to let some of my bills go [unpaid] like my house phone, cable, and cut back on my heating, food, water, and my gas bill,” one worker wrote. “Sometimes I need to borrow money from friends, family, and by the time I get my pay check, I’m broke again.”
Critics of the salary cap say it will prevent the college from attracting talented higher education executives. They also say that providing lower-income workers with higher pay will raise costs, force job cuts and stifle in-house hiring. But the campaigners say that high pay is no guarantee for excellence, and maintain that the cap will attract candidates who are better fits for the university’s mission. “We’re deeply attached to our public identity,” Sandy Ganzell, math and computer professor at St. Mary’s and one of the campaigners, told The Huffington Post. “There’s no such thing as the best college president out there; there’s the best president for St. Mary’s … and that’s the person who believes in our mission.”
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