Gross salaries are illustrative of higher education's woes

The Feb. 23 article "Top Pay Spread Around Campus" is a story that should outrage reasonable people. It revealed that the president of the University of Southern California is paid $906,778 per year, and that the school's football coach, the highest-paid college employee in the nation, receives $4.4 million, almost five times the president's king's ransom.

Universities are considered to be nonprofit institutions, something that has become a laughable concept, given the extent to which many of them have abused this designation and squandered public money and student tuition.

The fact that a mere football coach could be the most highly compensated college employee nationwide is reflective of a society that has abandoned traditional values and reason, as this violent sport is hardly a facet of public education that serves to have a powerful, positive influence on impressionable young people.

A college education is not affordable for most American families. The lunacy of the remuneration that is being provided to employees of the University of Southern California is a microcosm of a great deal that is wrong in academia.

 

OREN M. SPIEGLER
Upper St. Clair