When President Nan Keohane steps down in June 2004, the University will go through an inevitable period of adjustment. The new president will have to get settled into his or her new post, University divisions and departments will have to adapt to a new style of leadership and, in all likelihood, the budget will have to be acclimated to a new presidential compensation package.
Chair of the Presidential Search Committee Robert Steel said, however, that compensation should not become a major issue in the search for Keohane's successor.
"I'm quite certain that compensation won't be the first, second or third issue when we get down to final discussions about candidates we'd like to invite to be the next president," he said. Presidential salaries and compensation packages vary greatly from university to university. According to the New York Times, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson is the nation's highest-paid university president, pulling in $891,400 in salary and benefits in the last fiscal year. Among private universities, 27 presidents received at least a half-million dollars in the fiscal year.
Public universities tend to pay their presidents less than private universities, although the New York Times noted that 12 public university presidents made over a half-million dollars in the last fiscal year, and over a quarter were paid more than $400,000. Just down the road, James Moeser, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will make $256,175 in total compensation in 2003-04. Keohane pulled in $491,606 in salary and benefits in FY2002, falling somewhere in the middle of the pack. More recent data for Keohane was not available.
Although Keohane's compensation is significantly lower than those of presidents at some of Duke's peer institutions--for example Judith Rodin, president of the University of Pennsylvania, received $845,474 last year--John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, noted that it is not for stinginess on the University's part.
"There's no sense that Nan's salary is artificially low," he said. "That was her own choosing."
Keohane declined comment on her decisions regarding her salary. Some have speculated that Keohane has refused large salary jumps throughout her tenure because she has wanted to keep her pay increases in line with those of other administrators and faculty. Others have postulated that she simply did not become a university president for the money. There are no guarantees, however, that the University's next president will seek a compensation package on par with what Keohane has received.
"I think that we'll want to pay a competitive salary and compensation package, but we really haven't spent any time thinking about it specifically yet," said Steel, who is also vice chair of the Board of Trustees. "I'm optimistic it won't be a big deal and the search won't be a compensation-driven decision on either our part or the candidate's part."
Peter Nicholas, chair of the Board of Trustees, said the Board must be willing to shell out some money if it wants to snag its desired candidates for any position. "If we want to attract the very best and brightest of any capacity, we need to be competitive," he said. Burness noted that, as a candidate could possibly be coming from a very lucrative job, it would not be unreasonable to see a jump in presidential compensation. "I don't think compensation should get in the way of an appointment. From the University's perspective, we can't expect a person to take a significant pay cut to be our next president."
Nicholas noted, however, that there are limits to what a university can pay and that the Board will have to strike a balance when considering a compensation package for the next president.
"It's a combination of what is required to attract the person you really want and being clear that the size of the compensation package is consistent with the values of the University," he said. "It could well be that the person we really wanted was reaching for a compensation the University didn't think was fair, in which case we would have to think very hard about that. On the other hand, we shouldn't think that we are immune from the forces of the free market because we're not."
Steel said the search for Keohane's successor is moving along well and that the committee is sticking to its original statements on a timeline for the decision, which is anticipated for February 2004.
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