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UNC system salaries soar in past five years

By Jay Price and David Raynor

McClatchy Tribune Wire Service

Published: August 17, 2009

Across the UNC system, it's not just the layers of management that have grown quickly in recent years. Salaries have, too.

Among the administrators whose pay has soared the fastest are some of those who act as the right-hand, do-anything staffers for chancellors and boards of trustees. In the past five years, according to UNC-system records through the 2008-09 academic year, the pay for some of them had leapfrogged that of the governor, SBI director or secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety.

These employees have titles such as chief of staff, secretary of the university or secretary to the board, and the tasks they are assigned can vary hugely from university to university, depending on the size and role of the university and how its management is organized. Some of the assistants also wear a second or third hat such as the university's staff lawyer or -- in the case of East Carolina University's John Durham -- director of communications.

"Essentially, it's whatever the chancellor or trustees need done," Durham said.

According to the records, he was making $146,400 in 2008-09, up from $85,808 in 2004, the year before he accepted his additional role as assistant secretary to the board of trustees.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, Brenda Kirby, the secretary of the university, was making $150,000, up from $94,000 five years ago, a jump of nearly 60 percent.

Those who do this work have backgrounds as varied as the tasks they're assigned. Some, such as Fayetteville State's chief of staff and vice chancellor, Thomas Conway, came up through academia. He holds a doctorate and was once dean of undergraduate academic programs at NCSU. He was paid $184,000 in 2008-09.

Among the others are former administrative assistants. That shouldn't fool anyone about their abilities, said Marlene Ross of the American Council on Education, an expert on the upper ranks of university leadership.

"The people in these jobs are really working intensely and have an enormous amount of responsibility," she said.

At fast-growing Western Carolina University, Chief of Staff Dianne Cook Lynch made $138,087 last school year, a 75 percent increase from her salary in 2004, when Chancellor John Bardo promoted her from executive assistant.

Bardo said she had already been doing some of the work of a chief of staff before he also gave her some duties that had been performed by a vice chancellor who was retiring. That move did not include adding any new staff to his office, which has consisted of five people for decades, he said.

Enrollment is soaring, the campus has grown from 270 acres to 650, and the university is about to break ground on the first building of a new campus of hybrid public-private functions modeled on NCSU's Centennial Campus, Bardo said. As planning for that campus began, the need for someone who could make decisions just as he would on land planning, water, sewer and road issues while meeting with local government officials has been crucial.

Bardo said that he considers himself a careful steward of the taxpayers' money and that Lynch's salary was well spent.

"If you look at what she does and what it would cost otherwise to get those things done, there is no question in my mind that she is well worth what she's paid," he said.