Only the best for UT's Shumaker Pay package was nation's second-highest

The Commercial Appeal ^ | 8/17/03 | Richard Locker

[GailA]

Only the best for UT's Shumaker Pay package was nation's second-highest

By Richard Locker locker@gomemphis.com August 17, 2003

NASHVILLE - After his selection as UT president last year, Dr. John W. Shumaker said his goal was "to give the people of Tennessee the very best university they can afford while urging them constantly to afford the very best."

It appears that Shumaker convinced state officials to afford the very best when it came to his own pay: His compensation package was worth $733,000 to $800,000 a year in direct and deferred salary and bonuses, plus posh housing, an automobile and several other perks.

Among the questions that have come up following Shumaker's resignation is whether UT really needs to spend that much for its leader.

The money parts of his package alone were enough to rank him second in the nation among public university presidents in the annual survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Chronicle listed the pay of the University of Texas system's Mark Yudof at $787,319 during the last school year, highest of 131 public universities it surveyed. Shumaker's second-place ranking was based on UT's estimate of his package at $733,550, but a review of his two employment contracts indicates it could have been worth nearly $800,000 this year, if he had remained for the contracts' full six-year term.

The size of Shumaker's package, in a state long mired among the bottom five in most measures of education spending and outcomes, surprised many people.

And last week's UT audit revelations of his lavish spending on the university's tab, which led to his abrupt resignation Aug. 8, have opened a new discussion about what his successor will be paid. Virtually no official contacted believes the next president will be paid that well.

"I think it would be premature to say what we will do at this point," said Johnnie Amonette of Memphis, chairman of the UT Board of Trustees executive committee, which meets Monday to discuss an interim president.

"I don't think you necessarily have to pay anywhere near that much to get a good president," said Eli Fly, Shumaker's predecessor and current president of the nonprofit UT Foundation Inc.

Fly, president for one year after a 41-year career at UT, was paid $259,000 a year and, unlike Shumaker, did not live in the stately university-owned president's residence overlooking Fort Loudon Lake in Knoxville.

Shumaker's pay resulted from a determined drive by former governor Don Sundquist and some UT trustees to lure him away from the University of Louisville, where his total pay was about $600,000 a year.

The search that led to Shumaker began in the summer of 2001 after J. Wade Gilley resigned suddenly 22 months into his tenure as UT president. Embarrassed by the Gilley episode, the governor, who is also chairman of the UT Board, assumed personal control of the search for a successor.

Shumaker, then 59, emerged from a confidential application process conducted by Korn/Ferry International, a headhunting firm under a $90,000 UT contract.

Although Shumaker was one of two finalists, along with Dr. Marlene Strathe, then vice president and provost of the University of Northern Colorado, Sundquist and key trustees focused on the Louisville president from the start.

The committee voted unanimously on Feb. 27, 2002, to offer him the job; he accepted two days later and the full board approved the selection March 5, 2002.

Shumaker's UT package was composed of two separate contracts, one with the university funded by state taxpayer and student tuition dollars, and one with the UT Foundation, funded by contributions by alumni and other private donors.

In addition to its cash value, the UT contract included an automobile and rent-free use of the president's residence, with UT paying for all utilities, maintenance, housekeeping and groundskeeping. It also paid for Shumaker's entertainment and travel expenses, moving expenses that totaled $13,829, plus both the standard benefits package for senior UT administrators and supplemental benefits provided by the UT Foundation.

Under the terms of Shumaker's resignation, he will be paid only his base salary of $365,000 for the rest of this year.

At the May 10, 2002, meeting where the package was approved, Amonette told her colleagues that a college president must "not only be an academician and educational leader but also a corporate CEO, a visionary, a fund-raiser, a public relations expert, a politician and a public official."

Amonette said Friday that when the search first focused on Shumaker, trustees were not aware of his full Louisville compensation. "We had agreed that our goal was to get him, but we had not gotten the numbers at that time."

She also said she did not realize that the pay package UT was offering was as high at it was compared to other schools.

"We saw it as an investment. He had doubled the endowment in Louisville and increased their research grants. I think just from a business standpoint, you couldn't expect someone to come from a smaller university to a five-campus system and take less money. It just wouldn't make sense."

Fly, the former UT president, said that "no one knew when that search first started that the salary would be that high. I suspect that we would have had lots more candidates if it had been known."

Fly said the board should set a ceiling at the start of its new search.

Tennessee Higher Education Commission executive director Richard Rhoda said Friday that Shumaker's pay package surprised the state's higher education community."I don't think the UT Board will offer that kind of package next time. I believe it will be more in line with the average," he said.

By comparison, the chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents system, Charles Manning, is paid $215,629 this year and is provided a car.

University of Memphis president Shirley Raines is paid $203,428, receives a $3,000 expense allowance, is provided a car, a residence and an additional $3,000 annual allowance for expenses at the residence. The U of M Foundation provides her a $1 million life insurance policy and a supplemental long-term disability insurance policy.

Shumaker's pay package was not the largest on the Knoxville campus. UT football coach Phil Fulmer's total package is worth an estimated $1.65 million a year. Men's basketball coach Buzz Peterson's contract is for $785,000 a year. And Lady Vols basketball coach Pat Summitt is paid $650,000.

[GailA]

No wonder tuition is sky rocketing. The MANSION shumaker is vacating just under went a multi-million dollar make over...yet he went out and spent another half mil on furnishings and trimmings.

[meenie]

You've got to love the consideration these people have for the taxpayers and the students that are eliminated by the huge increases in tuition.

[Those_Crazy_Liberals]

That whole university is corrupt. That's why the Gators always beat them when it counts.