A recent report by the Chronicle of Higher Education showed the salaries of college presidents increased over the last year.
However, as it has in the past, Penn State refused to release Penn State President Graham Spanier's salary.
The only information the study revealed about Spanier's salary was that in 1999 he received $379,516, plus $15,715 in benefits and deferred compensation and $4,258 in expense compensation. That was a 9 percent increase from his 1998 salary.
"The university has a long-standing [Penn State Board of Trustees] policy that keeps salaries confidential because it is considered personal information," university spokesman Tysen Kendig said.
Because only a portion of Penn State's funding comes from the state, it is considered a state-related university, not a state-owned university, and thus is exempt from Pennsylvania's Right to Know Act, he said.
The Right to Know Act, enacted in 1957 and revised last year, requires government agencies and institutions to provide copies of public records to state residents.
The University of Pittsburgh, Temple University and Lincoln University are the three other state-related universities in Pennsylvania that do not release individuals' salary information, Kendig said.
The Graduate and Fixed-Term Employee Organization (GFTEO) disagrees with the university's decision to keep salary information private, GFTEO Organizing Committee Chair James Barton said.
"We think all employees should be transparent and open about their working conditions and benefits," he said. "It is something we've requested in the past and tried to ask the administration about."
This information was uncovered in 2001 when GFTEO members found two IRS Form 990 documents that listed the income levels for top university administrators' for 1998 and 1999.
The only other time that Spanier publicly announced his salary from the university was at the start of his presidency in 1995. At that time he was earning $250,000, excluding benefits and compensation.
According to the Chronicle study, released Nov. 10, the three highest salaries of college presidents last year were $891,400 to Shirley Ann Jackson of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., $852,023 to E. Gordon Gee of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and $845,474 to Judith Rodin of the University of Pennsylvania.
Portions of these earnings were due to benefits and deferred compensation, the part of one's income that one chooses to have withheld by the employer and put into a retirement plan.
Of public university presidents, Mary Sue Coleman of the University of Michigan received the highest salary last year, making $677,500, according to the study.
The Chronicle based its findings on the nonprofit tax forms that were filed last year by each university.
