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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Support staff at Virginia's public four-year institutions earn salaries that are comparable to similar schools nationally, with three exceptions, according to a report by Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.
The report examined the cost of support functions, which include libraries, police departments, student services, academic administration, public relations and maintenance. The commission released the report last week, The Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1sYNlwB) said.
The average support staff salaries at most schools are near or below the average of their peers nationally. The exceptions are the University of Virginia, Virginia Military Institute and Virginia Tech, where such salaries exceeded the average of similar schools nationally, the report said.
The primary reasons for the higher-than-average salaries appeared to be the base salaries of top executives, senior institutional officers and academic and associate deans.
Representatives of Virginia Tech, U.Va. and VMI said the report's conclusion is based on faulty peer groups.
The report used the Carnegie Classification system, which groups institutions based on the level of degrees awarded as well as by size and research activity. Virginia Tech and U.Va. were grouped with doctoral universities and VMI was grouped with baccalaureate colleges.
The comparison is not valid because "the broad Carnegie group includes all doctoral institutions," M. Dwight Shelton, Tech's vice president for finance, wrote in a letter to the commission that was included with the report.
He said Tech competes with the "very high research" institutions and benchmarks its compensation against theirs.
A number of Tech's senior administrators had 20 to 30 or more years of service during the period of the study, he said.
"It is reasonable that the salaries for administrators with significant experience could be above average," Shelton wrote.
Stewart MacInnis, VMI's spokesman, told the newspaper that the report tries to fit every school into a certain hole.
"And we don't fit more than others don't fit," MacInnis said.
He said the only applicable comparison for VMI is the U.S. military academies.
U.Va. uses a different peer group, which includes top research universities that are surveyed regularly to determine the "market range" for competitive salaries for "one-of-a-kind positions," said Susan Carkeek, U.Va. vice president and chief human resources officer.
"Our analysis shows our administrative salaries are right at the midpoint of our peers," Carkeek said.
The commission is scheduled to make recommendations to the General Assembly in November on how the schools can operate more efficiently.
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Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, http://www.timesdispatch.com
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