For the third time in 14 months, the Ohio University Board of Trustees approved a pay raise for OU President Roderick McDavis.
The most recent pay increase came during Friday’s Board of Trustees meeting in Athens, when the trustees clarified that he was eligible for the 1 percent faculty raise the board approved in August. During that same board meeting three months ago, the trustees granted McDavis a 2.89 percent increase.
McDavis’ base pay now sits at $431,150, bumping his compensation rank to eighth of 10 Ohio public university presidents (he was ninth after the August raise). With this most recent increase, he also surpasses David Hodge of Miami University, who has a base pay of $430,000.
When McDavis received his raise in August, we wrote that, in light of that ranking, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable. McDavis is, after all, the state’s longest-standing public university president.
We do not, however, believe this latest raise was justified.
OU students have seen tuition hikes every year since the 2009-10 school year, and the Board of Trustees has recently approved hundreds of millions of dollars of debt for capital improvements to the university.
Last month, Robert Barchi, president of Rutgers University in New Jersey, was given a $90,000 bonus; he and his wife Francis, however, chose not to accept it.
“Given that we are currently in a year of fiscal restraint and that we are asking our faculty, students and staff to do more with less, Francis and I intend to gift the net proceeds of this incentive compensation to Rutgers,” Barchi wrote to the board. “It is our intention that this money be used to augment student aid for undergraduate students at our university.”
That’s an option we believe McDavis should have considered. The amount isn’t a hugely significant number, but it would have been a gesture of solidarity for Ohio University students—especially when student debt in the U.S. now exceeds credit card debt.
McDavis’ new salary is the equivalent of more than 41 OU in-state undergraduate students’ annual tuition of $10,380, and it is almost nine times the median Ohio income of $48,071.
With our university taking on debt to fund projects, we don’t believe these raises—even if they aren’t astronomical—should be on the table every time the board meets. Three times in 14 months is excessive.
As the university’s expenditures continue to rise, and with the state’s share of instruction historically decreasing, students will be left to pick up the tab. We surely won’t be surprised if the board considers another tuition increase in the spring.
We just hope that come the Jan. 24 meeting, the board keeps yet another raise for McDavis off the table. But if it doesn’t, we hope he considers acting in a similar manner to Barchi.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
CORRECTION (11/5): In Monday’s issue of The Post, an editorial stated that Miami University President David Hodge has a base pay of $430,000. That figure is actually his total compensation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Hodge’s base pay is $409,209.
