HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, PRIORITIES REVEALED EDITION: Just Rewards? Some colleges cut back during the pandemic, but not when it came to their presidents’ pay packages.
The news hit the inboxes of Assumption University faculty and staff members on a Thursday in late September 2020. Assumption would temporarily cut back on its match of employee retirement contributions for the next eight months. The move was necessary, President Francesco C. Cesareo explained in an email, because the small private college in Massachusetts was staring down a budget deficit “that exceeds any we have faced in recent memory.” Doing so would save Assumption a half-million dollars and help offset the university’s growing financial losses — the result of unforeseen pandemic-related spending and diminished room-and-board revenues.
As he concluded his message, Cesareo sought to reassure employees that the suspension of their retirement benefits would help Assumption emerge from the crisis in a stronger position. Though spending cuts were needed, the university’s balance sheet and long-term financial outlook were stable, he said. And faculty and staff members could trust him to be open and honest as the university navigated the pandemic’s fallout.
“What I can promise is that I will continue to be direct and forthright with you as we address these challenges,” Cesareo wrote, according to an email obtained and authenticated by The Chronicle.
What the recipients of Cesareo’s email could not know was that just 16 days prior, Assumption had adopted a deferred-compensation plan for the man himself. Such deals are common tools used by colleges and universities to pay their chief executives and other top employees. Institutions and their trustees often describe such arrangements as necessary components of many executive contracts, because they help attract and retain highly valued employees who do difficult jobs in an increasingly competitive labor market. But such agreements, especially those that were established amid some of the worst months of the pandemic, also raise larger questions about institutional priorities — and about whose contracts can be reneged on, and whose are inviolable. . . .
The Chronicle’s reporting found Assumption was one of several private colleges and universities to establish such plans with select employees during 2020, a year that saw athletic and academic programs eliminated, paychecks and benefits slashed, and higher ed’s work force decimated. At least two other institutions established top-hat plans for their presidents last year. Another 14 colleges entered into such plans with more than 100 nonpresidential employees.
Some pigs are more equal than others.