University Presidents' Salary Increase During Hard Economic Times

The headline “Presidents’ Pay Rises Faster at Public Universities than Private Ones, Survey Finds” on page A19 caught my attention. The lead, however, did not keep my attention as well as it could have. They used a basic lead where they talk about the President at Suffolk University and his $2.8 million pay package. I didn’t think it was affective to start off with an example of a college president whose pay has drastically risen. They should have supported the headline more instead of jumping right into things.

I thought the story would be more educational rather than full of opinions and quotes. There was not a lot of information provided other than what people had to say about the topic. The story did not live up to the headline and was not what I thought it would be. I thought there would be a significant amount of quotes but would also be supported by facts. The main point of the story was to propose a question as to why public university presidents are receiving a larger pay increase than private university presidents. Between the failing economy and the tuition difference in private and public universities, it has baffled a lot of people.

The story had no real organizational technique. It had a lot of quotes and support of those quotes but only towards the end. I thought that some of the information and facts that they used should have been used more towards the beginning to keep the reader interested. The story did a pretty good job linking together its main ideas and the quotes. Between most of the quotes, there was information provided that led to the next quote.

I learned that public university presidents are making more money than private university presidents. I also had no idea that university presidents of any type of school make as much money as they do. I was surprised to learn that the president of Suffolk University had a $2.8 million pay package. I was left questioning why university presidents would have a pay increase during these hard economic times. Finally, I learned that despite their rapid salary increase, their salaries are still $100,000 behind private university presidents.