CSU pays ex-chancellors $459K per year
Two former chancellors remain among Colorado State University System’s highest-paid employees, months and even years after resigning from a standalone post that has since been eliminated.
Chancellor Emeritus Mike Martin’s $305,000 annual salary places him just outside of the top 10 list of highest paid CSU Fort Collins and CSU System employees — and makes him the second highest-paid CSU System employee, only behind Chancellor and CSU President Tony Frank’s No. 2, Amy Parsons.
The $154,000 annual salary paid to Martin’s predecessor, Joe Blake, is among the 250 highest salaries awarded to the more than 4,800 faculty, professional and administrative staffers working at CSU’s Fort Collins campus and at CSU system headquarters in Denver.
The average annual salary of employees at CSU Fort Collins is about $76,000, according to an examination of fiscal 2015-16 salary data compiled by the Coloradoan.
Faculty and staff salaries account for more than $360 million of CSU’s billion-dollar annual budget. Roughly $134.6 million of its budget comes from taxpayers through the state of Colorado, while another $395 million comes from student tuition and fees. The rest comes from various enterprise funds, grants and other sources.
Martin and Blake are employees of the CSU System, the 34-member administrative unit that oversees the missions for CSU’s Fort Collins, Pueblo and online campuses. System staff will be paid a collective $3.8 million this year, earning an average annual salary of about $115,000. Frank is paid $100,000 yearly from the system, on top of the $475,000 he is paid by CSU.
CSU’s two chancellors emeriti, who were first and only stand-alone chancellors for the university system, perform different work in their semi-retired stage, according to contracts and job descriptions for the positions. They each say that they focus each day on proving their worth to CSU and the CSU System.
“Every day I’m trying to prove that I can be useful, and show the benefit to the cost to CSU,” Martin said. “Every day I’m trying to prove my benefit to CSU.”
But some find the idea of former chancellors on payroll at all to be questionable.
“I know both of the prior chancellors and they’re both good people,” said Tim Gallagher, a CSU finance professor and the president of the CSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “But to have them continue to be on the payroll when they’re no longer in the chancellor position, in my mind is irresponsible.”
He added, “that money that’s going to people who are no longer chancellor could be used to hire some new faculty and make a real difference in the classroom for our students.”
Ex-chancellors have ‘significant value’
Martin stepped down from the chancellor position in February 2015, about 2 1/2 years into a five-year contract signed in 2012. Soon after he resigned, CSU’s president and chancellor roles were again combined, with Frank taking the helm and a $100,000 salary increase.
Meanwhile, Martin remains on contract with the CSU System until April 2017 — about two months shy of his original five-year agreement.
Mike Hooker, CSU System spokesperson, said Martin and Blake bring value to the university through their contacts and expertise in academia and business, respectively. He also noted that, with the two being the only stand-alone chancellors in CSU history, the situations are unique to them.
“The university sees significant value in the work they continue doing even though they are no longer in the role of Chancellor, and each desires to continue working for the university, so they have stayed employed with the university in different capacities,” Hooker wrote in an email.
The two former chancellors fill dual roles. Per a payroll roster for the CSU System, Martin is a chancellor emeritus and senior fellow for the system 28.5 percent of the time; the remaining 71.5 percent is as a senior researcher/specialty faculty for the Ag Economics/Colorado Futures offices for CSU. His pay is likewise divided as $86,925 for his emeritus role, with another $218,075 for his policy job.
Blake pulls in $30,900 for 20 percent of his full-time equivalency as chancellor emeritus; the other $123,600 and 80 percent comes from work as a senior development officer for the University Advancement division of CSU.
Hooker noted Martin, whose academic roots are in economics, has contributed public policy papers via the Colorado Futures Center, along with a high focus on the “attainment gap,” or the barriers to success faced by some socioeconomic groups, such as minorities and the poor.
Blake was the first person in CSU System history to hold the sole job of chancellor when he took the mantle in 2009. About two years later, at age 75, he stepped down. He has now served as chancellor emeritus for longer than he served in the full-time role. Prior to joining CSU, Blake spent almost a decade as CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
With the “emeritus” title, Blake “has been instrumental in helping CSU secure millions of dollars in gifts to the university, including several multimillion-dollar gifts,” Hooker said. CSU reported more than $172 million in donations in the most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30. It reported raising about $111 million in fiscal 2011, the last year before Blake became an emeritus chancellor.
Blake describes his year-to-year deal with the CSU System “almost on a handshake.” He refuses to take full credit for any of his accomplishments in that time, chalking them up to the benefits of having a solid team in Denver.
“Sometimes, we look at money as the only evidence of success,” Blake said of his fundraising efforts. “But if you recruit the right people to help you in some of these areas, you’re going to do very well in adding value.”
Martin, meanwhile, describes his higher education policy work as a return to his roots.
He’s continuing his effort to get CSU admitted to the American Association of Universities, a consortium of 62 universities that he describes as the creme de la creme of higher education.
He’s also looking at policy proposals that he hopes will shift how Colorado handles higher education.
“I don’t think I can judge (that success) myself, and maybe you can’t even judge it in the short term, but I want to be able to look back and say I contributed to this policy that made higher education better in Colorado and for the students that are being served.”
Martin’s contract to work as chancellor emeritus, unlike Blake’s, has a defined end date. It wasn’t a coincidence, Martin said. The economist by trade said April 2017 is when he could maximize return from his retirement plans and Social Security benefits.
“I want to get to a point, to be honest with you, that my retirement package was such that I could live comfortably and still volunteer with things I want to volunteer with,” he said. Mike Martin
Those volunteer goals include teaching at a Native American school and continuing to advocate for CSU, including via fundraising.
Martin left the chancellor post on March 1, 2015. The year before, he was named a finalist for the presidencies of both Florida State University and the University of Nebraska.
Martin said both were the result of him being recruited — “I haven’t actively pursued a job in 25 years” — and that the chancellor emeritus role is the “last hurrah for my career.”
He said a resignation and retirement package came after back-and-forth with the CSU Board of Governors and Frank. Martin took a pay cut of about $125,000 per year when he stepped into the emeritus role.
While Martin didn’t elaborate on what exactly drove him to step down, he said he had been coping with health problems and questions of how he could be most useful.
“Sometimes, you look at the mirror and say, ‘Can I bring the kind of energy and innovation to bear that the place needs, or can I still contribute, but in a different way?’” Martin said.
Unique positions
While professors and faculty who earn the emeritus title aren’t typically salaried, it’s not unheard of for high-level administrators to be kept on a kind of retainer, said American Association of University Professors Senior Higher Education Researcher John Barnshaw.
For example, Texas Tech University System Chancellor Emeritus Kent Hance is being kept on as emeritus for three years at $240,000 per year, versus the $420,000 he made as chancellor prior to his 2013 resignation, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports.
The City University of New York’s chancellor emeritus, who also stepped down as chancellor in 2013, likewise is collecting $300,000 annually and will continue to do so until almost 2020, according to the CUNY professionals union.
Even the former chancellor of the University of Missouri, who was stripped of the title in November 2015 after faculty and student revolt over race relations, will be paid $344,000 per year, albeit in a new, non-emeritus role created after upheaval at the university, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Emeritus status for faculty is treated as an honorific at CSU, like most institutions. It doesn’t come with pay unless the faculty member continues to perform work for the university, such as teaching a class, Hooker said. It’s handled similarly at the University of Colorado, where emeritus faculty receive library privileges, continued use of university email and other perks without guarantee of compensation.
Gallagher was also the former faculty representative to the CSU System’s Board of Governors when Blake was leaving the chancellor position, but as a non-voting board member wasn’t privy to terms of Blake’s exit agreement. Even then, he notes, there was only one chancellor at CSU, versus the four employees with some variation of the title now.
“My question is, do we really need a chancellor, an executive vice chancellor and two chancellors emeriti on the payroll at the same time?” Gallagher asked.
Without knowing the specific situations of Blake and Martin, Barnshaw said they may fit into one of two scenarios: One is to have a well-regarded figure for fundraising and advocating for the university; the other, a buy-out.
“It is fairly rare that you would have an emeritus president on staff if they were truly retired and had no function on the university,” Barnshaw said.