Former Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee will make $5.8 million over the next five years in his new gig as a law professor, speaker and researcher at the university.
Gee stepped down as president earlier this month after making a vaguely offensive joke about Catholics and football. At the time of his retirement, his nearly $2 million salary made him the third highest-paid public university president in the country. His severance package would have yielded him an additional $6 million over the next four years.
OSU is still going to pay him millions, but at least the university will get some use out of its former president. Gee signed a contract to join the law school as a tenured professor. He will “conduct research on 21st century education policy,” according to a press release.
“It was my great calling to have led Ohio State for fourteen years, and I am proud to be able to continue my work for Ohio and Ohio State,” said Gee in a statement. “I am also looking forward to deepening our understanding of the changing nature and role of higher education in the 21st century.”
Indeed, nothing is changing more rapidly in higher ed than its cost. As students struggle to pay, tuition rates continue to soar — and some say fatter paychecks for top faculty and administrators is partly to blame.
“If higher education wishes to maintain its privileged position in American society, it needs to contain its spending,” wrote Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, when Gee’s retirement from the presidency was first announced. “A good place to start is at the top.”
Universities should stop acting like corporations and instead serve the public good, wrote Vedder.
“University presidents aren’t corporate executives,” he wrote.
Universities and their highly paid celebrity hires have caused controversy lately. The University of California system hired former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to become president because administrators believed her government connections could bring more federal dollars to UC. In exchange, her salary was nearly tripled.
University administrators are the highest paid public employees in most states. In fact, the top earners on the Pentagon payroll are the Army, Navy and Air Force football coaches.
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