Part one: UK President discusses university issues with the Kernel

Q: Is the top-20 plan still the main goal of your administration even with budget cuts?

A: We have gone through a recalibration of it, which I think you have to do.

Business plans are live documents that you have to see where you are at any given point in time and make adjustments.

The challenge we have right now is that the whole national financial picture is so fluid and the state’s situation is hard to predict what it will or will not be able to do.

So we’re not going to reforecast the dollar amounts we need right now, just because we’re going to fight for every dollar we can get.

We’re still hanging on to that plan type … It differentiates us from different universities in the state, it gives us a reason to be, in order to push ourselves toward higher quality faculty and higher quality students and higher quality programs.

I can’t say we can’t make it, but I know we’ll be a lot better off (if we) continue to push for it. If you were to talk to deans we recruited …   they came because they felt there’s something going on here.

We’ve got some momentum despite the financial times.  [Provost Kumble Subba]swammy and I made the decision not to freeze hiring. If we could just keep ourselves moving, it’s a great time to take advantage of it. We’ve been able to make progress in tough times.

People kept really focused and keep pushing forward despite no raises for the last two years, but three years in a row is just intolerable.

I’m not sure what all we’re going to do there, but we’re going to have to do something because you can brag on people, but that doesn’t pay their bills and that doesn’t send their kids to college. You’ve got to look at how to fund salary increases. That’s a paramount issue for next year.

We haven’t made a decision on the budget yet, but our highest priority is trying to find a way to have salary increases for faculty and staff, and loo­­­king at any source of funds we can have. We’re looking at any cost-cutting we can do.

That does raise the question about tuition, because it’s not a good time to be raising tuition, but it is a source of revenue for us.

We’re doing all we can to raise funds to try to offset some of the money that comes out of the general fund money (money that the state gives UK). I’ve been here since 2001 and, in that time, there has only been a $7 million increase over eight years (from $303 milion to $310 million).

There are three vehicles: outside development, tuition and cost-cutting. If there is state money, that’s an upside. It’s going to be tight next year even with additional state money.

Q: Is it too soon to start talking about the budget?

A: It’s too early to talk about the budget because we don’t know what numbers we’re going to be dealing with.

Q: Is it safe to say that your number one goal is still the top-20 plan, and if it’s not, what is your number one goal?

A: Top-20 plan is still the goal, but the number one short-term goal is how to get salary increases for next year. Long term, we have to keep our sights on that top-20 plan because it’s helping us move. Research is up substantially, student quality is going to go up even though we have larger number of students and the quality of the faculty is continuing to improve. A lot of it is attributed to the top-20 plan — it gives us a reason to be and someway to focus.

We can change the economy, we can change education, we can change health care by having top universities. The top-20 plan will be part of my legacy. One of the reasons I took the job is because I thought it was an ambitious goal. If you don’t have ambitious goals, and choose mediocre goals, you’ll be mediocre.

Q: Can you clarify the status of whether or not you accepted your bonus? What is different between this year and last year, as to why you didn’t accept the bonus?

A: When I came in and the committee asked me what salary they should target, I told them just to pick the average salary for the Southeastern Conference, because that’s who we’re associated with.

So they did that and came out with a number, but it was higher than what the CPE (Council on Postsecondary Education) president was being paid, and there was a thing in House Bill 1 that said no university president should be paid more than the CPE president.

The interpretation that committee took at that time was, ‘Well, we can pay him more than that, but we know that’s not a competitive salary,’ because they have all the national surveys and they knew what the other presidents in the state were making.

What some of them do is they have foundations, so they get a salary from the university, which is what you normally hear about, but then what you don’t know is what they get from the foundation because those aren’t public entities. We don’t have a foundation. My contract is what it is. We’re very transparent … the content (of the agreement that made the salary competitive) was: we’ll put a $100,000 in here that will get you to the average, but then it kind of took on this bonus connotation.

The last time they re-did my contract, they didn’t put any upside into the bonus for the base salary. I’ve never had a raise from the base salary.

This year, it’s the same thing. I’m probably the fourth-highest paid president in the state, if you really look at the total compensation people get.

I don’t know where I’m at in the SEC now, but some of that gets you up to the average of the SEC and with the total it might have exceeded that. I don’t know, I haven’t looked at the data.

The difference this year, than the other years, is that we have not been able to give a salary increase and I just didn’t feel comfortable taking anything this year. Last year, I took all of it except $50,000, which I left in there, but nobody paid attention to that part of it. It was as if I took the whole thing, so I figured I might as well give it all up.

It’s not good for the university to pay a salary which is not really not a competitive salary. When they start looking for another president, they’re going to have to pay a national market price, whatever that is, they’re going to have to change it.

The other thing that’s happened in the meantime is companies like AIG and all these other places which have disappeared because their people have all taken these ungodly bonuses, which are just hard to explain.

This one is at least based on a numerical (performance) basis, on which I’m very pleased to receive a 96 rating. When you think about it, when you have an anonymous request to fill out a performance form in an academic institution, to be able to get a 96 is pretty good. I always feel good about that, and then the bonus question comes up. It gets disconnected from the performance.

My point, I guess, is, look at some of these corporations where these people get these multimillion dollar bonuses and they lost money. I know I don’t understand that, so I think most people think of bonuses they think of non-performance.