As a public institution, the University of Colorado must make its financial records, including faculty and staff salaries, available to the community. The CU system, through the Office of University Budgets, provides this economic data on its website.
Sam Gill, a religious studies professor, said that as a public institution this make sense.
“I’ve never seen it, but it doesn’t bother me at all since we’re public employees,” Gill said.
Ken McConnellogue, associate vice president for University Relations, said the website lists people by their job position and employee identification number and not by name. This is due to employment turnover and the capacities of the software that runs the database.
If someone wants to know the salary of a specific person, McConnellogue said they could go directly to the university’s human resources department.
“We’re a public university and our salaries are a matter of public record,” he said.
Griffin Woolsey, a 19-year-old sophomore communication and political science major, said he would like to know how much his professors earn so that he can gauge how highly regarded they are in their fields and compare their earnings to other careers.
“I would like to know what fields are getting more [money], but personally, as a professor I wouldn’t want it known,” Woolsey said.
Mitzi Lee, an associate professor of philosophy, said she agrees that the information should be available to the community.
“As a public university it does seem that it should be a matter of public record,” Lee said.
Regarding the use of employee numbers and not names, Lee said that anonymity is good so it can’t be used to target faculty members.
As a tool to see how much the university pays its salaried staff, the CU compensation website breaks the data down into state-funded and non-state-funded salaries, which include grants.
Meredith Jones, a 24-year-old senior psychology major, said she did not know about the CU compensation data and doesn’t think it is relevant.
“Why is the amount of money that a professor makes important?” Jones said. “Why would it be important for me to look at?”
Sofia Talarico, an 18-year-old freshman psychology major, said she was also unaware of the CU compensation website but wants to check it out as it may affect professor performance.
“I personally feel that if my classes are not well-structured, that might be the result of my teachers not caring enough because she’s not getting paid enough,” Talarico said. “I would definitely be interested in knowing the difference [in salaries].”
The CU compensation page is located at the Office of the University Budgets website and only shows the most current complete academic year, 2009-10. It lists 6,851 faculty and staff at CU-Boulder, 965 at CU-Colorado Springs and 6635 at CU-Denver. Additionally, the website lists 367 employees for the CU system, including the President of the University, Bruce Benson.
According to the website, CU-Boulder has 675 employees who earn $100,000 or more. President Benson earns the highest listed salary of $359,100.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Thomas Cuffe at Thomas.cuffe@colorado.edu.
