Eric Griego
Even though I’m a proud Aggie, like most New Mexicans I’m excited to see the Lobos have a strong basketball team this year. A great season for our hometown team brings us all a sense of pride and helps us forget, even for a small while, some of the tough challenges facing our community.
Despite the strong support all taxpayers have shown for the University of New Mexico sports program, we have to remember what the primary purpose of our colleges and universities is: to graduate future scientists, doctors, lawyers, business managers and teachers. At no time is this mission more critical than in an economic downturn, as the newly unemployed seek higher education in order to increase their employability or to move into job sectors that are growing and out of those that are shrinking.
Likewise, at no time is the funding to accomplish this mission more imperiled than during a recession. In times like these, when money is tight, it makes sense to reevaluate our priorities and focus our limited funding where it can best accomplish our goals.
In the best of times, six-figure salaries for athletic directors and other administrators make precious little sense because such lavish expenses take money away from the business of educating students. When education funding has already seen devastating cuts due to revenue shortfalls, and students are faced with ever-rising tuition, it’s just plain wrong.
These sorts of unjustifiable administrative expenses have been garnering lots of headlines and discussion from state lawmakers, and for good reason. Not only do they eclipse the salaries of rank-and-file faculty by shameful amounts, but they come at the expense of basic investments in things such as early childhood, health care and public safety.
Some examples
According to UNM’s own job postings, some of the faculty is paid reasonably well by New Mexico standards. An assistant professor can make anywhere from $44,000 to $80,000.
But one slot, for a full-time electrical computer engineering professor – with a Ph.D. – is advertized at just $60,000. Someone with a M.D. or Ph.D. in molecular genetics microbiology can earn between $75,000 and $100,000, but the ceiling for faculty pay doesn’t extend much higher than that. It’s certainly nowhere near the quarter-million or half-million-dollar packages paid to some coaches and administrators.
The worst academic pay goes to ‘adjunct faculty.’ This is a fancy term for a temporary, part-time teaching job that can pay less than $3,000 a semester. These are usually non-tenured, benefit-free positions, and while adjuncts do not teach a full schedule, their job duties don’t begin and end in the classroom by any stretch. There is curriculum to develop, office hours to keep and papers and tests to grade. And a master’s degree is usually a minimum requirement.
Universities are relying more and more on adjuncts as a way to save money, but they do so at their peril. No college or department can maintain a strong academic program without tenured, long-term, respected professors.
Time to reassess
It’s time to reassess our priorities. Our universities must place educating students well beyond bloated layers of overpaid administrators. When it comes time to tighten the fiscal belt, we must begin at the top and eliminate unnecessary luxuries first.
UNM needs to reduce the number of its most highly paid administrators and significantly reduce the compensation packages of those that remain. Then, and only then, can we ask our students and teachers to take another hit. Then, and only then will taxpayers be willing to consider new taxes to support the basics of government – educating our kids, keeping us safe and taking care of the weakest among us.
The budget balancing proposal from the Legislative Finance Committee calls for significant cuts to higher education along with tuition increases. If those cuts remain, they should focus on reducing the oversized senior management team at UNM and other state-funded institutions.
Our future engineers, accountants and social workers should not have to put off finishing their educations because our state leaders and boards of regents don’t have the political will to say enough is enough to out-of-control administrative salaries.
Griego is a state senator representing southern Albuquerque, the East Mountains and Northern Valencia County. He is the former chairman of the state economic development commission and former president of the NM municipal league.