During the quarterly meeting of the Board on March 10, 2023, Acting Chancellor Dale Erquiaga announced that he has launched a compression study for community college presidents after recommending adjustments for DRI President Kumud Acharya and NSC President DeRionne Pollard to align their compensation with the minimum for their respective positions on the salary schedule in Chapter 3, Section 1 of the NSHE Procedures and Guidelines Manual. He said that the study was already approved for employees in the Chancellor's Office and System Computing Services, and would now include the presidents. He acknowledged that compression exists throughout the system and urged the regents to adopt a better philosophy about this issue and work to alleviate its impact
Regent Carol DelCarlo thanked the Acting Chancellor for raising the issue and voiced her appreciation for the two community college presidents who "took one for the team" during COVID and the resulting budget crisis.
In the discussion following his comments, Erquiaga told regents that there was the potential that thousands of employees are affected by salary compression. It was unlikely, he said, that NSHE could deal with compression all at one time because of budgetary issues since the legislature sets the amounts of monies distributed to the system. He said a solution would probably need to be handled in phases.
Regent Jeff Downs advised his fellow regents that it is discouraging for employees who are experiencing compression to see individuals with six figure salaries get ahead to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in one adjustment. He encouraged the Board to make it a priority to find ways to include salary increases in future budgets rather than just endlessly wait for the Legislature to address it.
DelCarlo told the Board that a study by the Gallagher Group four years prior revealed it would take more than $80 million to resolve compression across the system. She acknowledged that it was very difficult to get the Legislature to consider funding to address the issue, "to the point where we quit asking." She said she hoped the funding study sought by Governor Lombardo will address salaries.
During New Business, Regent Heather Brown requested a future business item to include an update and recommendation from the Chancellor's Office concerning the salary compression for Hilgersom and Zaragosa. She asked that her request be included in the agenda of an upcoming a special meeting instead of waiting for the next quarterly meeting of the Board in June.
While TMCC-NFA vigorously advocates for fair compensation for all individuals regardless of rank, we wholeheartedly agree with Regent Downs' assessment that the employees become discouraged and morale erodes when the most senior employees of the institution receive advancements of thousands, or in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars, while the rank and file sees little or no movement on the schedule. We don't accept the rationalization that legislative allocations are the only solution to this dilemma and, as Regent DelCarlo says, "we quit asking" just because the Legislature hasn't come through. The Legislature gives NSHE wide latitude in how its funding allocation is spent. It is the Board's own policies and salary schedules adopted a decade ago that have created the stagnation issues that haunt us today. Resolving this problem does appear to be an insurmountable task because of the huge numbers involved that grow larger every year, but it is a problem of the Board's own making. It is much easier for the Board to make adjustments for individuals with whom they directly interact on a regular basis, such as presidents and administrators, than for the rest of us. The total of the adjustments are smaller, but the impact for the individual recipient is huge.
Last summer, NSHE implemented recommendations from a system-level study which resulted in adjustments to multiple salary schedules in September. These adjustments affected primarily administrators by raising the minimum in their schedules. Three administrators at TMCC benefitted from this change to the schedule. Meanwhile, no such adjustment has been made to the salary schedules for academic or administrative faculty. With climate survey results
TMCC is currently engaged in a professionally conducted equity study that we hope will resolve these salary issues. But in her meeting with TMCC-NFA officers on March 13, the president said we would have to wait for the outcome of the study before she could make a commitment on funding for salary adjustments. She said the college may not be fiscally able to fully fund the study recommendations and intimated that it may require smaller or phased-in adjustments.
At last Friday's meeting, Regent DelCarlo declared that Presidents Hilgersom and Zaragosa took one for the team during the pandemic-driven budget crisis and deserve the adjustment. I wonder if the members of the Board recognize the rest of us as members of the "team," or that we all "took one" during the crisis. I have no doubt they understand the depth of the compression problem across the system, but I'm not so sure they would be as eager to work to solve the problem as aggressively for us as they are for the two presidents.
It is exceptionally tone deaf for the Regents to approve adjustments that alleviate salary compression at the executive level, while systemic inequities among the rank and file have yet to be addressed in a meaningful way. Compound this with the attitudes of faculty members that were revealed in the recent NFA Campus Climate Survey where faculty indicated that low salaries were their greatest source of dissatisfaction on the job and the number one motivator for seeking work elsewhere. Perhaps President Hilgersom should pledge to accept an adjustment that matches the percentage of adjustment TMCC is willing to make for faculty at the conclusion of its equity study. Her salary comes from the same budget as the rest of us. If she's worried about inadequate funding, she has the ability to directly impact that.
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