Kentucky Wants to Hike Tuition Solely for Professors' Salaries

At least the University of Kentucky is being honest, right? At least about their motives? In addition to the 6% across-the-board tuition hike for UK students, law dean David Brennen is requesting an additional 1.8% to pay his professors even more cash.

"Our salary structure is simply not competitive with other law schools with which we compete," Brennen wrote. "For example, the average faculty salary at the University of Georgia College of Law is nearly 40 percent higher than the average faculty salary at our college. Top 20 law schools average almost 50 percent higher faculty pay."

Brennen's salary is $250,000, according to a February 2011 UK salary database.

I actually think Brennen's criticism is kind-of justified (see below) but as an initial matter, I find it hilariously disingenuous that Brennen is comparing his school's situation to the University of Georgia's or to a "top 20" law school's.

Georgia is in Athens, which is not far from Atlanta. In Atlanta, Emory, Georgia State, and John Marshall-Atlanta all hire professors. Emory is a superior school to Georgia and Georgia State is a fairly well-regarded secondary public school (at 61st in the USNWR rankings, it's ranked higher than Kentucky, Kansas, UNLV, Oklahoma, etc.). Furthermore, Atlanta has a sizable legal market where many of these professors might go and practice as an alternative to teaching. That is considerable competition for people the law school wants, meaning higher salaries, so long as they're playing along with the whole prestige thing (and since they're ranked 35th in the USNWR, it's a safe bet they are).

Kentucky is ranked 71st is the USNWR. Its in-state rival, Louisville, is ranked 100th. Northern Kentucky is in what used to be the fourth tier. There is no quality private school in Kentucky that may drive up salaries, nor is there a large legal market to give professors an alternative place to take whatever unique skills they think they have. Where are they going to go, Cincinnati?

The cost of living in Athens is more or less a wash compared to the cost of living in Lexington, but these are completely different schools and its completely disingenuous of the dean to use Georgia as a salary negotiation tactic to get he and his buddies more coin to spend at the horse track.

Not that I'm much of a believer in the USNWR rankings, but Kentucky ain't no top 20 law school, so its professors should not be getting paid what a top 20 law professor gets paid. Kentucky is a flagship school in a state with a relatively small legal market. It fills a niche position, much like Kansas, New Mexico, Oregon, etc., and has very little chance of ever seriously competing with the top 25ish schools. At this point, the 1.8% increase seems like nothing more than a wealth grab by the faculty.

But Brennen does have a point to some extent if you look at the right numbers and consider who Kentucky's real competition is. One great thing about Kentucky is that they put their salaries online.

David Brennen - $250,000
William Wiecek - $180,000
Rutherford Campbell - $149,480
R. Schwemm - $146,043
Eugene Gaetke - $138,874
...

These aren't astronomical numbers by law faculty standards, but if any of them (or the ones making "only" $80-100k are having a hard time living in Lexington, Kentucky (median household income = $39k), they should quit, move, and give their position to a recent graduate.

What this really comes down to, I think, becomes apparent when you look at the salaries at their main competitor (real, not imagined), Louisville:

James Chen - $250,858.67
David Leibson - $188,168.00
Manning Warren - $182,114.00
Laura Rothstein - $178,021.04
Leslie Abramson - $162,341.00
...

I'm sure the Kentucky people are wondering why (or rather "furious that") Louisville is paying its faculty slightly more for a "lesser" school and that's at least part of the motivation for the salary request, especially since the cost of living in Louisville is only about 80% what it is in Lexington.

This is a much better point than the idea that Kentucky is trying to compete with the University of Georgia (or, God forbid, with Texas, Emory, UCLA, Vanderbilt, etc.). When you compare its numbers to Louisville's, the UK faculty really is getting screwed about as much as a law faculty can.

Of course, the real answer to this "dilemma" is not to raise Kentucky's tuition as a penalty for its administration's failure to keep up with salary inflation. Instead, the proper solution is to lower Louisville's salary levels and keep Kentucky's at the same rate. But with this ruling generation and this governmental climate, the answer is never to stand pat as a matter of fiscal responsibility. The answer is to raise expenditures and then jack up taxes (or in this case, tuition), albeit often this is accomplished indirectly (as in "we'll do it 10 years from now when the main beneficiaries of this thriftless zeitgeist are frying in hell").

Regardless of what one's peers are getting paid and whether or not its "just" between comparable employees, I still think it's deplorable for a group of six-figure earners running a non-profit educational racket to make their students fork over an additional $300-400 every year because they're the laughing stock of the AALS convention.

So in conclusion, David Brennen has a point from a fairness standpoint, but he argued it very poorly (he gets paid $250k and in 30 minutes I (salary = $0) found an argument that would probably work better to most aware people) and it's not a very morally-digestible argument, even if it's "fair."

And I think that's a good way to wrap up April.