UA coaches top list of highest paid state employees

Two head coaches at the University of Arkansas topped the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s list of highest-paid state employees in Northwest Arkansas for fiscal 1998-99.

Basketball coach Nolan Richardson will make about $916,618, and football coach Houston Nutt will bring in about $516,117 during the current fiscal year.

Those numbers include state salaries of $120,345 for Richardson and $116,615 for Nutt. In addition, the coaches’ salaries are supplemented by foundations and corporations. Since exact amounts coming from outside sources couldn’t be determined for the current fiscal year, estimates in our list for the coaches include the amounts in outside cash that they received in fiscal 1997-98.

Sixty-five of the top 67 state-employed wage earners in Northwest Arkansas are employees of the UA or the Northwest Area Health Education Center in Fayetteville, which is part of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. Also, some of the people on the list are employees of the UA Division of Agriculture, which operates separately for budgeting purposes from the UA campus in Fayetteville.

The list includes all state employees who make at least $100,000 per year.

Following the coaches in the list are three UA administrators whose state salaries are also supplemented by foundations: John A. White, chancellor; David Gearhart, vice chancellor for development; and Doyle Z. Williams, dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business Administration.

Since the line-item salaries for some positions — which are set by the state Legislature — are considered low by national standards, the private University of Arkansas Foundation supplements the pay of some UA employees so the Fayetteville campus can hire nationally recognized administrators and professors. Seven UA employees on the list had their incomes supplemented by foundations. The total amount of salary, including foundation money, is reported in the list.

White, for example, was making $244,000 per year at Georgia Tech. Daniel Ferritor, the previous chancellor in Fay-etteville, was earning $140,036 per year in that position. The UA wouldn’t have been able to lure White to Arkansas if the UA Foundation had not supplemented his salary. As a result, White was hired for $230,000 in 1997 and received a raise of $5,750 after his first year. By law, the state can’t pay more than $179,234 this year for the chancellor’s salary. The UA Foundation makes up the difference in his salary.

White’s salary in 1997-98 was slightly more than that of chancellors at peer institutions — 114.8 percent of the average for comparable universities in the South ($200,315), according to statistics compiled by the UA’s Office of Institutional Research. In the previous fiscal year, Ferritor’s salary of $140,036 was 76 percent of the regional average.

The UA’s average pay for vice chancellors in 1997-98 was 86.8 percent of the regional average of $130,393. For the same period, deans at the UA were paid an average of 93.1 percent of the regional average, which was $129,393. UA salaries were also below the regional average for faculty members: professor, 88 percent; associate professor, 92 percent; assistant professor, 94 percent.

Last year, White hired David Gearhart (No. 4 on the Business Journal’s list) at a salary of $200,000 per year to be vice chancellor of development. That’s an 85 percent increase over his predecessor’s salary ($107,935). But, according to the UA, it’s a substantial pay cut for Gearhart, who was previously a private development consultant. The salary for that position is capped at $118,084 by the Legislature. The UA Foundation is kicking in the remaining amount.

Four of the UA employees on the list — Leonard Schaper, Robert Elliott, Scott Burton and William Glezen — are paid through “non-educational and general” funds, says Donald Pederson, UA vice chancellor for finance and administration. That’s what many people refer to as “soft money,” meaning their salaries depend on grants or other funding that may be available for only a limited time.

The larger increases in percentage pay over the previous year seem to hinge on promotions or job changes.

Pederson, for example, received a 17.7 percent increase in pay when he changed jobs last year. Pederson was vice chancellor for academic affairs. He’s now vice chancellor for finance and administration.

Karen Pincus’ salary jumped by 37.5 percent after the Walton family of Bentonville gave $50 million to the UA business school in 1998 and Pincus was subsequently awarded the S. Robson Walton Accounting Chair. Pincus, who heads the UA’s accounting department, receives a salary supplemented from the $1.5 million endowed chair established by the Waltons.