Monday, December 16, 2013

What an outrage!!!!!!!!

My god, do you believe this?

The Chronicle of Higher Education has released its latest salary survey and, if you can believe it, there are forty-two presidents of private colleges and universities in the United States who get paid more than one million dollars!

Forty-two!

Some of these schools are exactly the big-name schools you would expect to pay high salaries, like Columbia, Yale, MIT,  Stanford, or the place at the top of the list, the University of Chicago. Others, however, are kind of surprising. Roger Maris College, Johnson & Wales, or the University of Laverne ??Granted, it probably is the only institution of higher learning you've ever heard of in Laverne, California, but really? $1,184,224 (31st)?

Who knew American colleges had so much money to throw around?

I'll tell you who knew: football and basketball coaches.

That's right, while the Chronicle is surveying academic salaries, USA Today surveys what NCAA members pay their coaches, and it happens that one or two of them also haul in over a million. Like seventy--yes, seventy--head football coaches, thirty-six basketball coaches, three assistant football coaches, and nine athletic directors.

In fact, if you want to find a coach who makes less than what Robert J. Zimmer, the president of the University of Chicago and the highest-paid president in the country makes, $3,358,723, you have to go down to Steve Spurrier, who coaches football at South Carolina and is number twelve on the coaches list; or number six on the basketball coaches list. Mike Krzyzewski, known universally as "Coach K" because literally nobody can pronounce his name, makes more coaching basketball for Duke than the top two university presidents.

So if you're a fundraiser calling for contributions to Michigan State, where I got my undergraduate degree, or Michigan, where I went to law school, don't be surprised if, instead of getting out my checkbook, I ask you about the $11,725,488 you paid your head football and basketball coaches last year.

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