All Posts Tagged With: "ontario college salaries"
Who is Ontario’s most highly paid professor?
Highest paid are in business, medicine
Every year, legions of new bright-eyed university students aspire to a six-figure salary in business or at a top-tier medical practice. But according to figures released this week on Ontario’s salary disclosure day, the big money could also be in becoming a business or medical professor.
Last year, twelve out of thirteen professors making more than $300,000 in the province taught business or medicine. That means they earned more than most executives at medium-sized universities. On disclosure day, all eyes are on the rapid growth of university presidential salaries, but last year many business and medical professors were quietly clocking big bucks.
Last year, we reported that the top-paid professor in 2007 was Brian Golden of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business. In 2007, he earned $303,490. But the bar has since been raised. In 2008, 13 professors, all without senior management responsibilities, made more.
This year’s leading professor appears to be McMaster University assistant professor Gary Chaimowitz, who made $373,321. However, while listed in the disclosure as an assistant professor Chaimowitz also holds an administrative position as Head of Service, Forensic Psychiatry at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. He also holds an MBA, merging his medical knowledge with business management ― a potent earning combination.
Many hospital-based physicians and hospital administrators at university teaching hospitals also hold the title of medical school professor, because of the close relationship between medical schools and teaching hospitals. As we noted in this story, in the United States, almost all of the most highly paid academics are senior physicians or hospital administrators, with some earning more than US$1 million a year. In the U.S., many hospitals are part of a university, and therefore many of those people are considered to be university employees. In Canada, they often aren’t, because of a different corporate relationship between hospital and university. But you get a sense of how much their Canadian medical equivalents (some of whom would also be med school professors) are making from this list.
Leaving medical schools aside, the 2009 title for Ontario’s top paid professor without senior administrative responsibilities goes to John Hull, a finance professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business. He received total compensation of $364,335 last year. Closely behind are fellow Rotman professors Glen Whyte and William Strange, who earned $363,290 and $354,231 respectfully.
Ontario’s top paid female professor is Deborah Cook of McMaster University’s Faculty of Medicine, who made $349,943. The most highly paid female professor not at a medical school is Brenda Zimmerman, who is an associate professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business. She made $314,612 last year, in part for teaching a course called “Understanding the Canadian Health Industry.”
Financial crisis in the university sector? What crisis?
To look at the presidents’ paychecks, you’d never know universities were desperately short of cash
Ontario’s public universities cry poor to anyone who will listen and can produce elaborate pie charts and balance sheets to support their claims. Interestingly, none of their advocacy materials mention the increasingly rich financial compensation awarded to the senior administrators of those same institutions.
Today, as required under Ontario’s “sunshine act,” the province’s universities were forced to disclosure the taxable compensation given to senior administrators.
If you were judging only by how much senior administrators are taking to the bank, you’d think universities were richer than ever.
Two university employees made more than a half-million dollars last year. John Lyon, Managing Director of Investment Strategy at the University of Toronto, was paid a salary of $494,598.04 with $62,876.32 in taxable benefits for a total of $557,474.36. Peter George, president of McMaster University, continues to be Ontario’s top paid executive head with a salary of $524,435.14 and taxable benefits of $9,478.34.
The next highest paid president, David Johnston of the University of Waterloo, made $45,000 less than George with a total compensation figure of $488,242.66. Following close behind at $484,357.92 is Mamdouh Shoukri, president of York University. Overall, 13 Ontario university employees were compensated over $400,000 in 2008 with another 59 clearing the $300,000 hurdle.
Province wide, 10,461 university employees made the $100,000 plus list. In fairness, over half of the people on the list made less than $125,000. The grand compensation total of everyone on the list is $1.4 billion. More than half of that went to those earning more than $125,000.
Judging by the record pay cheques for senior and mid-level university executives, one could reasonably conclude that universities are flush with cash and that “business” is booming. Sadly, that is not the case. University endowments are down by double-digit percentages and pension plans are facing major deficits.
To address growing shortfalls, universities are going so far as to exploit loopholes in tuition regulations to increase fees on students, in order to pay for the excesses of the sector. The University of Toronto, for example, is the latest university to exploit a loophole in provincial regulations limiting the maximum tuition the university charges. The rules set the maximum tuition for students taking a 100 per cent course load. Traditionally, student fees are based on the number of courses taken: A student taking four courses paid for four, a student taking five paid for five.
The University of Toronto plans to make students taking three or four courses pay the same fees as those taking five. Ten Ontario universities are already exploiting this loophole to generate additional funds. Other universities are increasing “administrative fees” for services students must use in the course of their university career.
But if the situation is so dire in the Ivory Tower, why are the people at the top taking home growing, record pay cheques?
Administrators are asking low-level staff to take pay freezes and benefit rollbacks. They are increasingly cutting full-time tenure track positions in favour of contract positions. (And then, as budgets squeeze, reducing contract positions). Student services are being cut so that, for example, students can’t get the counselling and other supports they need to succeed in university.
It seems that Ontario universities are only poor when it comes time to deliver the undergraduate education that taxpayers believe their money is going to support.
It’s time for Ontario’s university administrators to follow the lead of University of Winnipeg president Lloyd Axworthy. Axworthy, realizing that he’s asking others to bare the burden of his institution’s financial situation, cut his salary by 10 per cent.
If university administrators are unable to control their excesses, then it is time for the Dalton McGuinty government to step in and force universities to spend taxpayer money on undergraduate education instead of administration.
Administrators taking a pay cut may not amount to much in the big picture, but 10 per cent of McMaster president Peter George’s compensation could, for example, save the job of an entry-level professor facing lay-off as his institutions continues to cut Liberal Arts undergraduate programs.
What do you say university presidents? Do you have 10 per cent to give back to your institutions? Or is it just everyone else who is expected to bail you out?
College presidents: gaining on their more highly paid university peers
The pay of college executives still trails that of universities, but they’re catching up
Colleges are often unfairly seen as the second tier of the higher education universe—and, as we noted last year, that extends to the compensation of college administrators, who have long been paid substantially less than their university peers
So did anything change in 2008? Yes. Ontario’s Sunshine List salary disclosure was released today, and the tally of Ontario college employees earning more than $100,000 (the threshold for inclusion on the list) is, as always, much shorter than the count for universities. However, the number of college senior administrators earning more than $200,000 has grown by nearly two-thirds, and several highly paid college heads are taking home university-president-sized paychecks.
The highest paid college president in Ontario is Frederick Miner of Seneca College. With a salary of $406,000 and taxable benefits worth $5,000, his compensation is enough to put him squarely in the upper tier of university administrators. Miner’s salary is more than that paid to the president of the largest university in the country, David Naylor of the University of Toronto. (The latter’s salary was $380,000).
Conestoga College president John Tibbits was paid $387,000. That’s more than the president of neighbouring Wilfrid Laurier University. (The president of the other university just down the road, the University of Waterloo was however paid about $101,000 more).
The presidents of five other Ontario colleges — Humber, Sheridan, George Brown, Mohawk and Algonquin — earned over $300,000. Their pay is below that awarded the presidents of large Ontario universities, but in line with the compensation given to presidents of smaller Ontario universities. For example, Dennis Mock, president of Nipissing University, Ontario’s second-smallest public university, was paid $271,000. Bonnie Patterson, president of Brock, last year received total compensation of $338,000.
The pay gap between colleges and universities appears to be larger in Western Canada. According to BC public sector salary disclosure, as compiled by the Vancouver Sun, there were 182 employees of the BC university and college system earning more than $200,000. (Data is for either 2006-07 or 2007-08). Of those 182 highly paid individuals, only two were from the college or institute system: the acting and outgoing presidents of BCIT. (What’s more, hardly any of the 182 members of the over $200K club came from the former university college system; almost all worked at one of the province’s four traditional universities, in particular UBC).
