October 20, 2011. “My feeling is he is on a systematic campaign of distorting the evidence about higher education funding to serve his own purposes.” –UFF President Tom Auxter
Here’s what Florida professors earn; Scott releases salaries
By Denise-Marie Balona, Orlando Sentinel
9:10 PM EDT, October 18, 2011
Gov. Rick Scott has posted the salaries of employees at all of Florida’s 11 public universities — a move some faculty leaders say is pointed at professors and meant to make universities appear wasteful.
A spokesman for Scott said the online posting was simply an attempt to be transparent about how public money is spent.
Professor pay is one of the issues Scott wants to target as he pushes to overhaul higher education in Florida during the legislative session that begins in January. He has been considering dramatic reforms intended to save money and boost professor productivity.
Scott’s office posted the names and salaries of the university system’s 50,000-plus employees on a website called “Florida Has A Right to Know,” which already features pay data for employees at most state agencies.
The website was created shortly after Scott took office, said spokesman Lane Wright.
“The governor feels like there needs to be transparency, and this is one way he’s made getting access to these public records easy for everybody,” Wright said.
But faculty leaders such as Tom Auxter, president of United Faculty of Florida, pointed out that the database is misleading in that it doesn’t attempt to explain why about 20 professors make more than $500,000 a year.
He and others worry the public will focus on the high dollar amounts and overlook that fact that the average pay of professors ranges between $60,000 and $90,000, depending on the school, according to the American Association of University Professors.
Many of the higher-paying professors, Auxter said, are working physicians who teach in the medical schools. Some professors are paid more because they also have administrative positions.
Some are paid large salaries because they bring in significant amounts of money through grants and other revenue sources for research. These other sources often provide at least part of their income, a fact that can easily be overlooked when reading the governor’s online database.
“My feeling is he is on a systematic campaign of distorting the evidence about higher education funding to serve his own purposes,” Auxter said.
Read more at sun-sentinel.com.