In today’s Boston Globe, we learned that Jehuda Reinharz makes $709,965 a year, which is more than what the President of Harvard gets.
Jehuda makes $709,965 a year
In today’s Boston Globe, we learned that Jehuda Reinharz makes $709,965 a year, which is more than what the President of Harvard gets.
One thing the Boston Globe doesn’t break down in the article is how they came to the figure for Jehuda’s salary. Looking at Brandeis’s most recent Form 990, Jehuda’s actual “compensation” was $405,000. The remainder of the salary figure was $305,000 in contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation plans. Those benefits he will probably not be able to touch for a number of years. By comparison, Harvard’s president got $640,000 in base compensation and $54,000 in deferred comp and employee benefit plan contributions. So while Jehuda’s was less, the President of Harvard did get more actual money to use right now.
As a note – Harvard’s president is actually one of the lowest paid Ivy league presidents. This probably due in part to the fact that there is a certain prestige that comes with being president of Harvard, so they don’t have to pay as much to attract candidates.
Median pay for a university president in 2008 was $427,400.
$710,000 doesn’t seem excessive to you? And sure, Reinharz can raise quite a few bucks, but is his job any more revolutionary than the median-paid university presidents?
Wait a second.
Doesn’t the Brandeis president live in a university-provided house?
And by the way, it’s on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Just to debunk the ‘too far, tasteless, personal, crap from the student body, crossing the line’ comments.
The house is nice, and it’s good that he doesn’t have upkeep…it should just be a reduced salary. A big deal.
But I want the chief fundraiser and figurative leader of an institution I love to love somewhere nice. If I could choose, wouldn’t I have Brandeis rather own a mansion for it’s President?
Just reduce the salary. And lay off the house photo, it’s stocked on the government’s Historic website.
This is absolutely nuts. Particularly with the University’s financial difficulties, there is no legitmate reason for one employee to make $710000.
I find myself agreeing with Comradical. I look at it through a lens of,”What does a president of a university do, and what does that service merit him?”
The president of a university does not deal with issues that a CEO or politician does, and deserves less as a result. That said, the actual numbers at play here, his current 700k vs 300 or even 100, are minute on the scale of a university’s endowment.
That’s an absurd amount of money. A president that cared about an institution would take a major pay cut and use the cut to pay or the salary of a couple of professors. I Jehuda were making 250,00 dollars a year instead of 700,000 for instance, that extra 450,000 dollars could be used to improve the institution in many ways.
The point is that Jehuda doesn’t have to pay upkeep for a house. (mortgage, maintenance, etc.) So, this is more relevant information in assessing if the amount of income that he receives is appropriate.
We should focus on more important questions:
Why should presidential income increase at a rate greater than inflation, and at a rate generally equal to tuition rate increases. Particularly when this executive has presided over a budgetary collapse…
Why should executives of universities be paid so ridiculously much? Lovers of knowledge (with the best interests of pedagogy in mind) ought be bought by the opportunity to welcome and create the conditions for teaching knowledge, not by desire for high salaries. Which isn’t to say that they should be paid minimally with no concern for their costs of living. If Jehuda earned 100k annually, he would be well-off.
If there’s anything Jehuda’s good at, it’s making Brandeis money. So I’m willing to withhold judgment about his lifestyle for the reasons stated by Alan and Anon.
Regardless, I don’t look at that house and see “excessive wealth”, I see “nice”. I’ve seen excess. That is nothing.
Still, the question raised by the Globe article in general is interesting insofar as it cuts to the Moral Quandary of the corporation: when a business venture becomes a large organization, the organization, composed of many employees top to bottom, does not benefit. Rather, the bigwigs at the top get richer and everyone else stays where they are despite their companies success. It’s one of the facts of capitalism, yet it strikes many as unfair. To oppose it tends toward socialism; nothing wrong with that in my view. I just feel like the issue here is a larger one than “jeez Jehuda makes hella benjamins yo”.
The President uses that house to entertain donors, such as the Shapiros, or the Shermans, or other lucrative donors who might be kind enough to donate to our university. Believe me, my dad used to be president of a non-profit organization, and successfully wining and dining an owner was essential to raising money. As much as you make the house out to be so elitist, it’s pretty necessary to have a nice place if you want anyone to give money to you.
To all you haters out there – I just copied relevant data from the Boston Globe. Picture here.
So yeah I agree with whatever Phil said.
The house is a house traditionally lived in by university presidents and used to hold events for the university. Shouldn’t a unioner have a clue? You’ve been there, no?
The picture was not in the Boston globe article. No one said it was okay even if it was in the globe.
Jehuda’s house is not necessarily any indicator of wealth garnered from Brandeis itself. Most university presidents probably had more financially lucrative ventures before doing something society considers more philanthropic.
Again, is it deserved? Nah.
You know, Sahar, how much crap you’d get from our readers if *you* were the one who took this photo. But of course since the big-“legitimate”-media Boston Globe it’s OK.
Did someone really take a picture of his house? It’s a nice house… but that might be crossing some type of line, putting a picture up of his personal life like that…