Author’s Note: Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that the following misfortune for Georgia taxpayers could not have happened to a more deserving group of faculty members. Furthermore, in fact-spilling for the taxpaying public, this exercise is my responsibility alone, and my colleagues are not involved; I speak only for myself.
Kennesaw State University (KSU), a Georgia taxpayer-funded institution with over 49,000 students, has made a significant misstep. Provost Ivan Pulinkala, a dance professor with an annual salary exceeding $350,000, has undertaken a misguided overhaul of the academic salary structure based on a flawed study. The outcome? A leftist-styled equity approach, where professors receive equal pay regardless of their academic pedigree or field of expertise. The worst part? Georgia taxpayers are footing the bill for this costly and misguided equity exercise.
KSU hired Buck Global, LLC, in early 2022 to conduct a salary study for tenured professors, spending at least $234,790 in taxpayer dollars on this consulting firm, as revealed by a contract obtained through an open records request. The study’s flawed approach became evident quickly. Buck’s spreadsheet grouped diverse academic fields under broad and inaccurate categories, such as lumping economics in with “Finance and Financial Management Services,” despite the distinct differences in market salaries for these fields. This error effectively meant that professors in disparate disciplines—like quantitative analysis, economics, and finance—were all treated as if they were in the same field for salary purposes. For context, this is akin to paying history and English professors the same salary simply because they both fall under the liberal arts, ignoring the differences in market value for each field. The result? Provost Ivan Pulinkala and President Kathy Schwaig—who earns approximately $500,000 per year and was previously the provost and dean of the Coles College of Business—ended up approving salary increases based on these inaccurate categorizations.
Finance and economics are considered sister fields of study; however, due to significant differences in opportunity costs—namely, non-academic employment opportunities—finance professors earn significantly higher salaries.
According to Dean Robin Cheramie of the Coles College of Business at KSU, who earns over $300,000 per year, professors of finance earn a median salary of $180,900, while professors of economics earn a median salary of $134,000, based on data from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). This represents a 35 percent salary premium for finance professors over economics professors. Dean Cheramie used these AACSB differences to award salary increases to faculty in Coles College in early 2024, thus maintaining the salary distinction between the two academic fields in line with what has been the norm for multiple decades.
Additionally, when the dean hires new faculty in the Departments of Economics (E), Finance (F), and Quantitative Analysis (QA), she differentiates between the three academic disciplines and awards salaries accordingly: E, F, or QA. The provost, the dean’s superior in the overly bloated university bureaucracy, views E, F, and QA as interchangeable regarding salary.
In October 2023, I requested a meeting to discuss this costly mistake with the provost. When I arrived at the meeting, a surprise guest was invited by the provost, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and professor of education, Pamela Cole, who makes over $250,000 annually. I was told she would provide additional insight into the Buck study; the meeting completely underwhelmed me. The only administratively led dialogue was about “CIP-codes.” These are supposed to designate each faculty member’s academic discipline, but KSU’s database is clearly inaccurate.
My PhD is in finance, and I have always excelled at any quantitative task. Mathematical coursework has always been my favorite. Over approximately 50 minutes, I tried to explain the ideas expressed in the second paragraph of this article to the two administrators, but to no avail. This is another case of zero accountability by university administrators for poor managerial decisions. However, this one will cost Georgia taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next several years.
In March, I requested documents pertaining to faculty members’ annual contracts to analyze salary data. Below is a list of salary percentage increases for a select few faculty members discussed in this article. Their names are omitted to protect their identities:
Person A: 12.093%
Person B: 6.00%
Person C: 21.959%
Person D: 10.444%
Person E: 2.946%
Person F: 29.357%
Person G: 23.851%
Person H: 30.003%
Person I: 2.747%
Person J: 23.447%
Person K: 22.766%
Person L: 16.196%
Person M: 10.827%
Person N: 6.765%
Person O: 37.52%
Person P: 21.104%
Person Q: 25.965%
I only investigated one academic department, but I am certain this negligence exists elsewhere. It would have taken 10 minutes to draft an email asking the department chairs—experts in their respective faculties—if the academic disciplines were correct before distributing over $2,000,000 annually in taxpayer funds. In full disclosure, I requested a raise to reinstate the finance premium discussed above, and the provost told me, “Your claim of a misappropriation of taxpayer dollars is without any merit. Following a review, your request is denied…” One thing that is undoubtedly without merit at KSU is the hiring of many administrators. I wasn’t simply asking for a raise; I also offered to help the university with numerous issues they are incapable of articulating and unwilling to address, such as freedom of speech, academic freedom, and the removal of social justice ideology. I have been denied multiple times.
In closing, I am by no means implying that economics professors were not underpaid or undeserving of raises in line with their academic discipline. I am saying that we now have an academic department (EFQA) where some economists and quantitative faculty are earning lower salaries because the dean pays them less than their peers, whom the provost pays more. If I were in their position, I would explore my options, as many of these individuals are likely experiencing wage discrimination in the Coles College of Business. I understand that many of them are not tenured and do not feel the job security that tenured faculty do, but retaliation from administrators is also legally actionable. I will stand up for these great individuals if they decide to seek salary justice—my original term, and don’t try to steal it, campus leftists.
Universities are run by administrators who realize that the academic disciplines they studied in college don’t pay well. These campus bureaucrats climb the administrative ladder to overpay themselves, spread incompetence, and force nonsensical initiatives on the faculty. I see many cracks in the ivory tower, and I hope to disrupt the ring of incompetence and reorganize colleges for the benefit of all Georgians. I wonder if Sonny Perdue, Chancellor of the University System of Georgia, who earns over $520,000 per year, will provide the leadership Georgians need to achieve salary justice!
Image of Kennesaw Hall by Larry Felton Johnson, Cobb County Courier on Wikiemedia Commons
This is an issue we deal with in K-12 a lot — all teachers get paid the same, regardless of what they teach, or at what level.
It used to be that high school teachers were paid more, with those teaching hard to fill subjects paid even more but when the unions arrived 50-60 years ago, every district went to some version of a step salary where teacher pay was based of years of experience and the degrees which one held. (This is why the CAGS certificate was created, to create a step between Master’s and Doctorate.
Let me play Devil’s Advocate here — if the students are paying the same tuition to major in Economics or Finance, then the professors should be paid the same because to do otherwise is to force the Economics students to subsidize the Finance students. To do otherwise is similar to asking all the academic departments to subsidize the Football department, and I think we all agree that is not right.
Faculty pay is the largest expense of any academic program, and if Finance professors are paid, say, 20% more, then (even though the state is subsiding all programs) then Finance majors should pay 20% more in tuition. The only equitable way to do this is to tack on a 20% graduation surcharge to graduate with a Finance degree, possibly in the form of a 10-year repayable loan.
This would not be a problem if the Finance field is as lucrative as the author suggests it is. I don’t know — but the other possibility is that it may be like law where superstars are fabulously wealthy and everyone else is moderately successful. If this is the case, then there is an ample supply of qualified Finance professors and if the existing ones chose to make more money doing other things, they can be replaced.
That may sound cruel, but isn’t that what the free market is all about?
The other thing I take issue with is the claim that it will be the taxpayers of Georgia funding the largess. No, it will be the students.
While states have good and bad years, with this leading to varying levels of state appropriations, when this variance is averaged and the amounts adjusted for inflation, state funding for public higher education has been stable if not increasing over the past 60 years.
It has decreased as a sum of the whole only because the dramatic increases in institutional spending. Faculty have gone from teaching 8 classes a year to teaching 3 — even without a dramatic increase in faculty salaries (adjusted for inflation), this decrease in productivity from the 1960s would more than double teaching expenses. Throw in administrative bloat and the fancy buildings and you have a lot of expenses above and beyond what the legislature is willing to fund — expenses that get dumped onto the students.
The State of Georgia is not going to increase the allocation to cover the 20% faculty pay raises — that money is going to come from the students…
Could you please tell us what degree you have? If I had to guess, I would say an Ed.D., like Jill Biden.
These degrees in higher ed, coupled with Social Work, and schools of education, student affairs and those in the “studies” departments are the vapid epicenters of woke and far-left ideologies; anti-American ideals should be exported to ‘community centers’ off campus.
It’s hard for me to take any of them seriously. In fact, their departments and offices should be liquidated. 😊🇺🇸
We should close universities for 15-weeks to accomplish the campus colon cleanse (CCC) I have repeatedly called for. I stand ready to flush!
Could you please tell us what degree you have? If I had to guess, I would say an Ed.D., like Jill Biden.
No, not like Jill Biden — mine is in curriculum from a Department of Teacher Education and School Improvement. Essentially, what our high schools should be teaching — instead of what they currently are.
The other thing about Jill Biden is that she was awarded a degree for essentially doing the job she was already doing and that’s like giving a successful businessman a degree for being a successful businessman.
These degrees in higher ed, coupled with Social Work, and schools of education, student affairs and those in the “studies” departments are the vapid epicenters of woke and far-left ideologies; anti-American ideals should be exported to ‘community centers’ off campus.
That is exactly the mistake that the Reagan Administration made 40 years ago and how we wound up in the mess we currently are in… These fields are not going to go away, even the “studies” departments are going to remain in public higher education because of special interest factions in the state legislatures.
The solution is to clean them up. In theory, the higher ed degree is a specialized form of MBA, and the solution is to insist that it be taught at the same level as the MBA program (although I am sure there are shoddy MBA programs out there).
The problem with Social Workers is the fact that they exist, the incredible amount of our civil liberties which have been surrendered to these do-gooders, above and beyond their ignorance and shoddy educational backgrounds.
Yes, they are bastions of Anti-American Leftist thought, but what are YOU doing about it?!?
There are 23,519* public high schools in this country and the reason why this country is so screwed up is that people such as yourself can not be bothered to care what is being taught in them, or by whom. You could eliminate every School of Education in the country and there still would be 23,519 public high schools in America. So what do you propose to do?!?
It’s hard for me to take any of them seriously. In fact, their departments and offices should be liquidated.
That was Reagan’s attitude toward the US Department of Education — and 44 years later, are we better off??? Half of American adults can not name the three branches of our government** — does that not bother you? The chant of “from the river to the sea” is bad enough, but none of these little darlings know *which* river or *what* sea, nor could find either on a map. Again, doesn’t that bother you?
We should close universities for 15-weeks to accomplish the campus colon cleanse (CCC) I have repeatedly called for. I stand ready to flush!
Seventy years ago, “college” consisted of two seventeen week semesters exclusive of finals. Classes met three times a week for 50 minutes — either on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. There were no holidays and no snow days, and professors taught eight classes a year…
So if we are going to start having a Campus Colon Cleaning, let’s start with flushing the layabout professors teaching only three classes (or less) a year — I don’t care what they are teaching, if they teach less than six classes a year, they are waste products who should be flushed away.
And as to spoilt brat professors crying about how much more money they could make in the private sector, they should simply be told to not let the door hit them on the way out of the building.
There once was a time when the dean would not only say that but follow it up with a letter of termination. Such deans, of course, have long retired and been replaced by graduates of Higher Ed programs.
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* National Center for Educational Statistics, US Dept of Education. (2020-21, most recent year data is available.)
** 2008 survey by Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which has also issued several studies on what college graduates don’t know.
10 second read.
Below please see a list of competent college and university administrators presently working in the USA:
Begin list:
End list.
Love it, Randy!
I stand ready (as I’ve been saying for 3 years) to help Georgia regain the proper mission of its universities; the social justice cancer must be eliminated.
How? Start firing value-destroying and anti-American employees!
No, the real problem is the concept of “shared governance” — the concept that the faculty should run the institution,
The problem is that there are no consequences for poor decisions.
Accreditation and it being a prerequisite for Federal student aid has made it virtually impossible to start a new university today, which is why we instead have branch campi of existing ones. There is no real competition like an Amherst College founded by dissident Harvard Professors — that sort of thing couldn’t happen today.
Faculty fortunes are no longer tied to the fortunes of their institution — not only is there mobility which once didn’t exist, but Social Security and TIAA/CREF have replaced the pension in importance, with most faculty now being unionized as well.
College presidents can be fired, and have (at best) a five year contract. They are accountable, the faculty aren’t, and this is a bigger problem than the general incompetence in the current cadre of academic leaders.
Maybe what should be done is drastically cut the salary of administrators. I never have understood why a dean needs a salary of $300,000+, especially considering what they actually do each day. Is the dean of the business school worth that amount when most of her time is spent pushing DEI programs? Why should the dean of an engineering school make that amount when they do no teaching, no research and, frankly, nothing on a daily basis even remotely associated with an engineer discipline?
In realty these salary adjustment schemes are merely a means of increasing the salaries of those who could not find gainful employment outside of academia.
BRAVA!!!!
Patti — one thing to think about is that the dean doesn’t have summers off.
Faulty teach what — maybe 30 weeks a year — the dean may get two weeks off but works (at least in theory) 50 weeks. So the dean ought to be paid 5/3 (50/30) of what the professor is paid, plus a minor stipend for hireachy.
That comes down to about twice what a professor is paid, and they get $150,000 around here.
Another thing to keep in mind is that deans do NOT want open dialogue amongst the faculty who disagree with them. Votes of no confidence are both real and forthcoming. The university isn’t a company and we as tenured faculty don’t work for any administrator. Admins come and go, but tenured profs are around much longer. It’s time for a the tenured-revolution!
As the faculty at UMass Amherst will soon discover, a vote of no confidence can be largely irrelevant in situations where they essentially are opposing the will of the governor.
While faculty can make a lot of noise, they don’t have the power to fire a dean (or chancellor) and at a certain point their antics can be construed as both infringing on management rights and insubordination. Professors are employees, and particularly in Georgia, I can’t see employee rights extending to the open defiance of management.
The situation at UMass involves Team Hamas, and even though Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey leans quite a bit to the left, she had publicly stated her support of having the police make arrests and remove encampments if orders to vacate were ignored.
After having vacated an earlier encampment under threat of arrest, last May 7th a second encampment was erected, this one protected by a barricade of snow fencing and wooden pallets wired together. After 8 hours of “negotiations” and several “last” warnings, 134 people were arrested, including around 70 UMass students and 6 UMass Amherst faculty members.
Reality is that you are not going to get over 100 state troopers without the implicit (and likely explicit) approval of the Governor — the student newspaper reported counting 109 marked state police vehicles parked behind the administration building.
So the faculty and students voted “no confidence” in the newly appointed (Mexican born) Chancellor. If the Governor is supporting him, everything else is irrelevant.
Public sector bureaucrats tend to have a “pay grade” perspective, and I would not be surprised to learn that the pressure for a unified “professor” pay grade is coming out of your state Human Resources Department.