Throw money where it belongs

Friday, June 13, 2008 10:01 PM CDT

As critical as leadership is, it can be overrated.

The Board of Regents for the University of Wisconsin System fell into that trap last week by giving hefty raises to some top officials. Most noticeably, the board gave system president Kevin Reilly a 21 percent boost to more than $400,000.

To his credit, Reilly plans to pass much of that fatter check on to his scholarship fund. Which makes us wonder why the board was so determined to vote it through in the first place.

Was it simply a symbolic move to lighten the ego bruise that Reilly must have suffered when new UW-Madison head Carolyn “Biddy” Martin became the first chancellor to out-earn the leader of the system? Or is this a genuine strategy the regents have adopted to better compete for top talent?

Don’t answer that. Neither answer could justify such a big salary hike for a top dog.

Not when the regents are making these generous decisions with others’ cash. Unlike both athletic director Barry Alvarez and football coach Bret Bielema, whose significant raises will be covered by sports revenue, academic raises come from taxpayers’ pockets. Yes, the same taxpayers struggling to put food on the table and unleaded in the tank.

Not when undergraduates are about to be charged 5.5 percent more for tuition, a decision The Journal Times opposed in an editorial last week.

And not when highly qualified faculty are leaving the flagship campus of UW-Madison because other institutions offer better packages, as the Chronicle of Higher Education reported recently. If any retention effort should lead the UW system’s priority list, it’s the one to hang on to the people who actually do the teaching and researching.

What makes the Reilly vote more dubious is it came during a closed meeting in Milwaukee. No matter how strenuously university officials argue to the contrary, the law does not give them that option. Once they’ve talked in private, the vote must come in the open.

Reilly’s efforts do deserve fair compensation. He has been praised for patching relationships with legislators, and he has acknowledged the state’s “brain drain” and initiated steps to address it. By most accounts, Martin, too, is a uniquely talented leader with Ivy League credentials.

Job one, though, is to make the campuses more attractive to students and their professors. They’re the links that keep the chain together. So, by throwing big money at the top of that chain, the regents have demonstrated their aim is way off.

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