Well, we know that failed UM president Royce Engstrom will be making $119,000 a year as a professor of chemistry.
He’ll be the third-highest-paid professor in that department.
He’ll teach just two classes.
- 6 hours a week.
- 24 hours a month.
- $413 an hour for the full year (though we really should exclude summer and perhaps January as well…though he’ll still be paid for those non-working hours).
Oh, I suppose there’s some office hours in there too.
Even if he was working a full forty hours a week – which I highly doubt – he’d be making $248 an hour.
What’s especially sad is that for the past 6 months we’ve been paying this failure his $309,000 a year university president salary…even though he got fired last winter.
What a mess.
For years now on this site we’ve dug into the pay packages of university administrators, and even some of the faculty and staff.
Today we’ll do some more digging.
We can do this because I got hold of the 190-page University of Montana Current Unrestricted Operating Budgets for years 2015 and 2016.
UM salaries begin on page 38.
Before we get to that, however, just take a moment to look at this graph:
As you can see, 80% of UM’s operating budget currently goes to paying salaries and benefits.
80%.
University of Montana Professor Pay for 2016
I focused on those making $85,000 or more. They’ll be presented from highest-paid to lowest-paid.
$130,000+-range
- J Mohr: $149,471
- S Running: $141,120
- D Dwyer: $131,599
$120,000-range
- E Rosenberg: $129,515
- N Uhlenbruck: $129,364
- R Bridges: $129,522
- N Shooshtari: $128,145
- L Frey: $127,760
- R Callaway: $125,922
- D Firth: $124,790
- B Burke: $122,014
- T Beed: $120,246
$110,000-range
- K Stanley: $118,330
- R Drake: $116,769
- T Manuel: $116,733
- G Evans: $116,651
- E Plant: $115,763
- L Tangedahl: $115,588
- K Swift: $115,000
- C Bishop: $115,000
- S Miller: $114,755
- C Ford: $114,789
- G Hudgins: $113,259
- M Braun: $113,198
- C Looney: $113,190
- K Jakob: $112,952
- S Clouse: $112,941
- J Henry: $112,399
- C Molgaard: $111,854
- B Costa: $111,329
- A Allington: $110,970
- J Staub: $110,195
- S Justman: $110,015
$100,000-range
- Y Reimer: $109,894
- B Bowler: $109,652
- E Gagliardi: $109,634
- A Golbeck: $109,596
- S Stan: $108,164
- V Colucci: $107,834
- S Tilleman: $106,385
- C McNellis: $106,071
- J Furniss: $106,018
- M Harrington: $105,729
- M Rivey: $105,639
- J Angle: $105,579
- K Harris: $105,522
- J Triche: $105,095
- T Floyd: $105,000
- J Johnson: $104,699
- J Herbold: $103,372
- B Chin: $102,552
- B Dourna: $102,480
- D Dalenberg: $102,468
- A Yonovitz: $102,324
- M Minnick: $101,986
- C Thompson: $101,864
- T Crawford: $101,804
- D Howell: $101,606
- H Beall: $101,509
- P Koehn: $100,467
$90,000-range
- M DeGrandpre: $99,659
- Calderon-Garciduenas: $99,408
- C Leonard: $99,287
- S Brown: $98,935
- F Rosenzweig: $98,588
- W Holben: $98,147
- J Carter: $97,120
- L Muir: $96,953
- E Capulong: $96,136
- M Kia: $96,097
- D Kellenberg: $96,079
- J Ross: $95,896
- J Sears: $95,882
- G Stanley: $95,787
- K Procacci: $95,699
- B Bach: $95,493
- A Holian: $95,253
- C Palmer: $95,191
- F Li: $94,854
- K Madson: $94,831
- C Bruneau: $94,664
- M Kavanaugh: $94,351
- J Harper: $94,275
- W Gardner: $94,203
- M Cracolice: $94,144
- A Santasier: $94,100
- M Bryan: $93,564
- K Haney: $93,114
- R Clow: $93,007
- L Kalachev: $92,721
- D Coffin: $92,661
- B Sriraman: $92,422
- D Lurie: $91,887
- Ramey: $91,878
- E Greene: $91,729
- K Canty: $91,423
- A Jabour: $90,831
- N Scott: $90,688
- J Maron: $90,376
$80,000-range
- J Gross: $89,958
- J Bookwalter: $89,584
- C Knight: $89,500
- L Broberg: $89,364
- N Natale: $89,113
- J Laskin: $89,093
- E Lo: $88,936
- D Beck: $88,635
- D Raiford: $88,456
- J Graham: $87,890
- J Klink: $87,816
- M Kayli: $87,737
- D Shepherd: $87,400
- A Johnstone: $87,322
- D Patterson: $87,242
- K Stroethoff: $87,192
- S Hayden: $86,966
- D Reisenfeld: $86,718
- M Hendrix: $86,647
- B Harrison: $86,628
- S Samuels: $85,819
- A Ware: $85,596
- C Fiore: $85,017
I don’t know how much that all adds up to.
I do know that I just listed 122 professors that are making more than $85,000 a year.
$10.6 million alone to pay just those 122 people.
The cream of the crop.
I also know that UM had 854 full-time professors or faculty members in 2016, and that they were paid $49 million.
Feel free to compare that to what they were getting paid in 2013.
If you add in the graduate assistants, contract administrative workers, and contract professionals that number jumps to $57 million.
Management, Accounting and Information Systems & Technology professors earn the most money.
Some departments don’t have anyone making over $70,000 or so, like Philosophy or Educational Leadership or Drama.
The highest-paid Drama professor, for instance, is R Bolton, with $75,720 in salary.
Those departments don’t quite have the importance, the cachet.
University of Montana Administrative and Research Pay for 2016
Now let’s take a quick look at the research positions:
- J Stanford: $119,148
- N Nickerson: $93,994
- P Barkey: $93,567
There are 26 research positions in total, and they’re paid $178,840…but when you add in all the professionals, assistants, and other people it comes to $1.4 million.
We know football coach Stit makes $175,011 a year and that basketball coach DeCuire makes $140,810.
Here are some more administrative positions that stood out to me:
- R Engstrom: $303,145
- P Brown: $201,243
- S Whittenburg: $193,924
- M Reid: $177,197
- M Riley: $165,696
- T Branch: $157,523
- R Christiaens: $154,347
- P Kuhr: $154,196
- N Lindsay: $140,000
- D Ressel: $136,464
- K Haslam: $131,194
- W Johnston: $114,656
- L France: $110,285
- J Fredenberg: $105,795
- M Schulzke: $105,057
- T Phillips: $104,028
- J Fanguy: $102,807
- K McGowan: $98,499
- J Hickman: $95,000
- E Wingard: $93,028
- T Battaglia: $89,541
- J Abbott: $87,501
- T Jablonski: $87,283
- S Harris: $86,513
- K Burgmeier: $85,359
All told, when it comes to institutional support there’s 181 full-time employees and they make $11.2 million.
You’ll of course get more up-to-date information in a post I wrote earlier this month, What Are University of Montana Administrators Paid?
Conclusion
This is a good idea.
Many of these people are being paid over $100,000 a year, they teach a couple classes, and they don’t really have a big effect on people’s lives.
When these people die, few will stop and notice.
But my, they sure have done a good job enriching themselves!
We know that the average male professor’s university salary is $74,470 a year.
At UM we have 122 professors making a lot more than this.
Why?
And let’s be honest – maybe some of them are good people, and good professors.
Tough shit.
Currently the university is in a self-imposed death spiral, one brought about through terrible leadership, a culture of drinking to excess, and an epidemic of rape and sexual assaults on- and off-campus.
Despite that death spiral, UM administrators continued to pay themselves sky-high salaries with extravagant benefit packages.
UM professors largely ignored the problems causing the decline, thus helping to enable that decline.
Individual departments continued to pay their ‘top dogs’ $80,000 to $100,000 a year or more…despite enrollment falling by 25% over the past few years.
I mean, when I see Steve Running is making $141,000 a year I have to wonder…why?
So no, these people have no one to blame but themselves.
What we see at UM is really no different than what we see in most of the country – an entitled, beholden-to-none elite that continues to live with their heads in the clouds as the economic world around them comes crashing down.
People simply aren’t going to UM anymore, but professors and administrators continue to pay themselves as if they were.
No, I’m not talking about cutting pay…I’m talking about cutting staff.
Get rid of these assholes!
And my how they’ll fight tooth and nail against that. Can you imagine having to go back to the private sector after being firmly ensconced in the hallowed halls of academia for decades?
Many of them have never worked in the private sector, an area of our economy that actually expects results.
No, I don’t think many of our professors would do too well there.
So they cling to their university positions, and in a way I’m glad for this.
Imagine the damage all those eggheads would do to our lives if they were let out of the institution to run amok, trying to put their theories into action.
God help us if we should ever suffer that fate.
So in a way having them safely institutionalized at UM is good. It’s just that it’s not sustainable, hence the frantic effort by admin to buy-out as many of these overpaid professors as they can.
Shame that we don’t have more up-to-date admin salaries to report.
I think I might head up to UM this week and see if I can scrounge that information up.
Until then...stay vigilant.