Editorial: A bloated salary in cash-strapped two-year system

By Dothan Eagle editorial
Published: November 25, 2009

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Alabama’s postsecondary education system has had a housecleaning of sorts in the last two years, with state and federal investigators uncovering numerous corrupt activities. The probe reached the highest ranks of the two-year system, unseating former chancellor Roy W. Johnson, who pleaded guilty to 15 federal corruption charges.

Johnson was originally slated for sentencing this month, but that proceeding has been moved to Feb. 24 in federal court in Birmingham.

Several other postsecondary employees have been indicted or convicted on related charges.

The state school board hired an interim chancellor, Bradley Byrne, whose role was more as a fixer than an academic administrator, and Byrne is using his accomplishments in cleaning up the two-year system as a springboard into the governor’s race.

So now that Alabama’s public education system has supposedly eliminated the waste in the two-year schools, the state school board has hired another chancellor.

Hold onto your hats: The new chancellor, Frieda Hill, will receive salary and benefits exceeding $350,000 annually.

Among her first tasks will be lobbying the Alabama Legislature for a 13 percent funding increase for the two-year system, which has lost $93 million in state funding in the last two years.

Meanwhile, students have been warned of an impending tuition hike.

Surely education administrators deserve to be compensated for their work, and any complaint over Hill’s contract should not been seen as a commentary on her qualifications or potential.

However, it’s difficult to justify bloated administrative salaries when the system is suffering from deep funding cuts.

Hill’s contract provides a base salary of $289,900, use of a state car, up to $15,000 in annual bonuses, $5,000 in moving expenses and a puzzling $24,000 housing allowance that, taken alone, exceeds the state’s per capita income.

Hill’s contract is about 20 percent above the median pay for two-year college chancellors. She now earns $184,930 in a similar position in Georgia.

Alabama’s two-year system provides a valuable service by making higher education and technical job training accessible to students who, for many reasons, cannot attend a university.

Education officials seem to have forgotten that the idea is to serve the public, not feed a bloated bureaucracy with exorbitant salaries and unnecessary perquisites.