I often listen to Minnesota Public Radio on my drives to Minneapolis and back—I’ve got the 3 stations memorized (88.5, 88.9, and 91.1), and know where each one cuts out and I need to switch to the closer transmitter. My only complaint is the annoying, chirpy fund drives, which always drive me to fumble for some ‘foreign’ station…and that’s difficult. Here in the western part of the state most of what you find are country western and gospel and horrid pop rock stuff.
Now I have another reason to be irritated at those repetitive pleas for me to fork over a hundred bucks for a travel mug and the undying love of a radio executive. I’m with Jambo, who isn’t going to cough up a dime to them.
On the 2004 tax return, MPR listed the names and salaries of 13 officers or trustees, 12 of whom earned more than $100,000. [President and CEO, William] Kling received $326,700 in salary, pension and benefits, and incentive compensation at MPR. He earns roughly an additional $218,000 from American Public Media Group, the parent company of MPR.
A salary of half a million dollars? At a non-profit?
“A salary of half a million dollars? At a non-profit?”
Yep. It’s actually not that weird at all. That’s actually fairly darn cheap for a President/CEO, and if you dont’ pay the going rate, then you are not going to attract any experienced managers to run something this big. We can argue over whether they are worth it at this price, but most people seem to think they are. If a for-profit corporation could save a few million dollars by hiring the mail clerk to be CEO, don’t you think they would?
It’s worth noting that being a non-profit doesn’t really have anything to do with not paying your executives high salaries.
I also have a problem with that kind of salary. I strongly suspect that someone else could run the organization for about a fifth of what they are paying. I also strongly suspect that nonprofits are not immune to a problem with for-profit organizations, namely, the good-old-boy network that takes care of its own.
Meh, I bet most media types make a lot more, and you have to admit that the quality of the goods Kling produces are excellent.
I think I get my money’s worth and then some. I would give more if I could afford it. Next to the ACLU, Public radio is the best weapon we have against right wing idiocy.
Dr. Myers, you just admitted you listen to nothing but MPR!! They’re probably THE BEST radio network in the country, and you don’t think they deserve high salaries? I mean sure they’re non-profit, but its not like they are feeding starving children or something, they do Prairie home companion and CarTalk, its entertainment just like a normal for-profit radio company. They just have a different business model. I don’t know. I guess you’re right they obviously don’t NEED donations, but at the same time, without donations they’re quality will almost surely go down.
So Kling makes about 10x more than the average employee at MPR? Given his responsibilities as President and CEO, that seems fairly reasonable. MPR may be a non-profit, but it is a huge operation and just like non-profit universities is going to have to pay something significant to attract top managerial talent. I think Kling made some very smart moves over the past two years by selling MPRs old AM station (WMNN 1330) for $6.75 million to a Catholic broadcasting network, and then picking up St. Olaf’s classical station, WCAL-FM, for $10 million and turning it into The Current. Considering that the other buyer for 89.3-FM was a ‘Contemporary Christian’ radio network PZ, I think you might consider thanking MPR with a little something for saving us from that awful alternative!
David –
You think the “average” employee at MPR makes $50K per year?
I’d be really, really surprised if the average salary were that high.
What’s the salary of the president at your university?
In 2002, at the Un. of Minn (not Morris), interim president Robert Bruininks made $295,000. Here’s a list of other 2002 salaries in public higher education: http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2002/presidents/ceopay.htm
Most seem to be 200,000 or more, and some of the biggest reach around 400,000. So again, all seems to be in around the right ballpark.
What do other presidents of radios firms make?
I couldn’t find a current article, but here in an article from the year 2000 is a good one:
“Lowry Mays, CEO and chairman of Clear Channel Communications, received a 1999 salary of $753,000 in 1999 and a bonus of $2.5 million for a total salary of $3.25 million. Ralph Guild, chairman and CEO of rep firm Interep, receives the highest base salary on the list. Guild is paid $910,000. His bonus for 1999 was $700,000, bringing his total salary to $1.6 million. Dan Mason, vice president of Infinity Broadcasting, is paid a base salary of $815,000 and a bonus of $750,000 for a total of $1.56 million. And, rounding out the top 5 is Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan, who is paid both a base salary and a bonus of $765, 175 for a total of $1.5 million.”
http://www.radioink.com/HeadlineEntry.asp?hid=28688&pt=archive
So it looks like Kling is taking a hit of at least half of what he’d be earning in the private sector.
MPR is a business. It grows if the programming is successful and if the stations they serve grow in listenership.
Give or don’t give. It’s your perogative. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head. Continue listening for free, there’s no harm to that.
But I do have a problem with the idea that those in the non-profit world, like those in the field of education are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, or helping their soul, or doing it for the children and therefore don’t deserve to be paid what they’d be paid anywhere else.
My wife worked in the non-profit world. She worked in the offices of an educational foundation. She got paid shit for a highly stressful job. In the private sector, the same duties would pay twice that, at least.
They just take advantage of people, if you ask me. The idea is that if the cause is worthy, you really should be volunteering your time anyway, so any money you get is bonus, and you should be thankful. Oh, and if you’re an executive, you are expected EXPECTED to kick back a sizable portion of your salary to the company as a donation. I kid you not.
One of the reasons why non-profits are run horribly in this country, if you ask me. They don’t pay enough to hire the people who can do the job right. So money gets wasted in inefficient ways.
Better to hire the best you can get, and save the money by doing things efficiently.
I will believe in free trade when a major corporation announces their new CEO lives in a third world country and makes three dollars a day.
Somebody convince me that the idea of “you have to pay nonprofit heads a huge salary to get good quality people as CEOs” is something more than just indoctrination by the cult of the current American business model. And you’re not allowed to say, “if you don’t pay that much they could just go work for ClearChannel.”
I could see $100,000. I could see $175,000. I could even see 200k. But not 500k. But maybe I’m living in a cave?
I”n 2002, at the Un. of Minn (not Morris), interim president Robert Bruininks made $295,000.”
Yeah, and the wanker (click on my link to see why he’s a wanker) should be making about $295,000 less than that. And he’d still be better off than myself and most of the rest of the students there, too.
Being a “business” isn’t an excuse (and that DEFINITELY shouldn’t apply to education, even though it has become a de facto business). MPR wants my donations? Fine, but they’re not going to get anything from me until they use what’s right under their noses first.
I don’t need or want to pay a CEO’s salary with the little money I have. Instead, I support businesses that stand firm with principles. Admittedly, it’s a lot easier to do that in Minneapolis than in Morris, for example, but without standing up for principles now, soon there won’t be much left to stand up for anywhere.
Somebody convince me that the idea of “you have to pay nonprofit heads a huge salary to get good quality people as CEOs” is something more than just indoctrination by the cult of the current American business model. And you’re not allowed to say, “if you don’t pay that much they could just go work for ClearChannel.”
Why not? Because they can.
This isn’t arguing in a vacuum. These are people who can choose between various options—folks can give a large discount for working for a worthy cause, but not when that discount is multiples of the salary they’re getting paid at the nonprofit.
You’re asking people to be STUPID to work at a non-profit. And that’s….not smart.
“MPR wants my donations? Fine, but they’re not going to get anything from me until they use what’s right under their noses first.”
MPR doesn’t run ads (though like many public stations, it does announce its donors on the air, which is a sort of ad, though not quite the same). It has to ask listeners to pay what they see fit for its content. It’s a different business model. If you like what that business model produces, you can pay for it. If you don’t want to, go ahead an continue enjoying a service you get completely for free (last I checked, most public stations get miniscule government funding anymore).
But it’s a little hard to understand how someone who feels entitled to free goods and services has much room to complain the business choices of those that produce it.
This isn’t arguing in a vacuum. These are people who can choose between various options—folks can give a large discount for working for a worthy cause, but not when that discount is multiples of the salary they’re getting paid at the nonprofit.
You’re asking people to be STUPID to work at a non-profit. And that’s….not smart.
No, I’m asking people not to be MERCENARY. At least some people. The kind of people who might have, oh, I don’t know, ethical reasons for working for a nonprofit like a public radio station.
Imagine one is offered employment at two jobs. Job A pays a high salary and largely involves maintaining an institution that makes the society a better place; Job B pays an exhorbitant salary and largely involves increasing shareholder stock values irrespective of societal benefit. Are you saying that the best descriptor of a decision to take Job A is “stupid”?
Is that what it has come to?
And by “exhorbitant” I mean exorbitant, though I should have said excessive.
My original post goes into a little more detail on my beef with MPR and the money is only half of it. The other part was their shameful work in killing a new type of public radio service a few years ago called Low Power FM. And even if you can accept half a million for Bill Kling, which I obviously don’t, what about 12 guys on the Board of Trustees making over $100k each? What are they doing for their $million+ that should make those of us making a lot less cough up some dough? I’ve been on a couple boards, granted the biggest with a budget about 10% of MPR, but I get paid nothing. Which is fine by me. And if they were paying me 10% of what the MPR board members get there’s no way in hell I could in good faith ask the public to cover the cost.
“This isn’t arguing in a vacuum. These are people who can choose between various options—folks can give a large discount for working for a worthy cause, but not when that discount is multiples of the salary they’re getting paid at the nonprofit.
You’re asking people to be STUPID to work at a non-profit. And that’s….not smart.”
But that’s *exactly* what academic scientists do. Anyone who can get a PhD in a science could certainly handle the lesser academic challenges of a professional school like law, medicine, after which they could make multiples of an academic salary. And yet, despite all the hype about “scientist shortages” there seems not to be one — at least not in biology — go look at the depressingly large number of applicants for tenure track positions at even the third-tier universities if you disagree. There’s a lot more to choosing a career than salary.
IMO Jambo, low-power FM sounds good in theory, but I suspect in practice we’d end up with an FM station antenna atop every other church steeple.
The going rate, huh? I’ll bet one of the second level people at MPR would be willing to step up to CEO for $250,000 a year in combined salary.
It’s the business culture seeping into non-profits. An organization seeks to cut cuts and improve productivity, but only looks down the org chart for these savings.
You’re asking people to be STUPID to work at a non-profit. And that’s….not smart.
Roger, speaking as someone who could be making twice what I’m making now working at a non-profit, where I work nonetheless as I’d just as soon not make the world a worse place in exchange for that extra cash, bite me.
Jonathon, it’s not about choosing a career. It’s about choosing a job *after* the career has already been chosen. Kling has experience running a radio station; he could do that at MPR or at Clear Channel. PZ Myers has experience as a biologist; he could do that at UMN or at Stanford. I bet most academics given a choice between doing the same job at $200,000 or $80,000 a year would take the $200,000 job no matter the institution.
Hey PZ,
Just for the record, how much do you make?
For comparison purposes, what are the football and basketball coaches at the University of Minnesota paid?
Should we all stop donating to universities until their coaches and professors start working for fifty percent (or more) less?
“Somebody convince me that the idea of “you have to pay nonprofit heads a huge salary to get good quality people as CEOs” is something more than just indoctrination by the cult of the current American business model. And you’re not allowed to say, “if you don’t pay that much they could just go work for ClearChannel.””
cm, let me take that challenge. Its just simple economics, companies always look to hire experienced people. Lets suppose MPR is looking to hire a new radio host, well they have a huge applicant pool, tons of students have experience hosting shows at their college, and its a fun job so they’ll take a reasonable salary too. So the salary will be low.
Now suppose they are looking for someone to run the company. Hmm, how big is that applicant pool going to be? How many people have run a major radio network? Maybe 100? And how many of these people are currently looking for a job? None!
Anyway, this is all beside the point, because Kling is not some new hire, he built MPR from the ground up, and got rich doing it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Kling). He is not the nicest guy around, and he runs the enterprise for profit-his own. All that said, he is responsible for MPR, I mean, it wouldn’t exist without him, so I think that is an acheivement worthy of a lot of money. Certainly way more than some regular employee who just puts together a one hour show or sweeps the floor or something. The two jobs/achievements are really not even on the same continuum as far as the business world is concerned.
Oh, Yeah.
It’s also dishonest for you to talk about salary, pension and benefits in one paragraph, and then add them up and call them salary only in another.
Pension and benefits is usually about 30% of salary. So his “salary” is substantially less than you reported.
That’s why you should listen to IPR radio stations (Radio K, University of Morris Radio station, KFAI, ect). Dispite how much the hipsters like MPR, it has done just as shady of backdoor business dealings as the stuff clear channel’s wet dreams are made of. And, unlike MPR, IPR stations actually need the money. They don’t have five-star chefs catering their fund drives.
Low Power FM is a little too off topic to get into here but yes, there was a lot of interest from church groups. But a group I worked with put on a workshop on the LPFM application process (when it looked like it was actually going to be adopted) here in the Twin Cities and only about 20% of the people who showed up were looking to do religious broadcasting so there were plenty of others out there. One would think a non-profit working in the public interest would have welcomed new voices to the airwaves but MPR fought it tooth and nail. People in MInneapolis might also remeber that MPR tried their best to keep KFAI (another public radio station) from getting on the air in the 70s.
Non-profits are particular sorts of incorporations with particular tax-code filings that class certain things on the financial balance sheet a certain way. All income, regardless of whether its over or under the current expenditures, ultmiately goes towards the expenditures of the organization, so there is no profit distributed to shareholders. Salaries are treated as expenditures, not profits.
There’s nothing in there about not paying your employees well for services that are deemed worth the expenditure.
A lot of people here seem to think that they could find people willing and capable of doing the same jobs for far less. Maybe they can, maybe they can’t. But are you really sure you are in a good position to judge whether one can or can’t? I seriously have to question whether any of the people claiming this have ever run a business or a non-profit or have any clue at all what’s involved in hiring people or the needs of having good management. Before deciding on going to work on political camapigns (and now probably pursuing a completely different direction: going back to school for a dergee in biology), I mastered in Public Administration and non-Profit Management at NYU’s Wagner School.
I’m not trying to claim special expertise here, but I do think that for a bunch of people that agree that the instincts of non-biologists aren’t necessarily the best for quickly passing judgement on biological controversies, you’d all see that people with no background in what it takes to succesfully run a non-profit or get the best staff and managers aren’t necessarily going to have the best instincts in judging what’s reasonable or not in terms of non-profit management. My small amount of experience in the field doesn’t give me the power to declare things from on high without bakcing them up, but it certainly has convinced me that things aren’t as simple or as easy a call reading some stray set of facts about salaries and non-profits and getting all outraged. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for a salary to be unwarranted, or all sort of shennanigans to be pulled. I’m just saying that I think people without the right expertise and information to properly weigh the situation are making a lot of quick calls that seem uninformed about a lot of key factors.
Check out William McGuire, CEO at “nonprofit” UnitedHealth Group, right over in Eden Prairie, IIRC. He got $124.8 million last year, according to Forbes. (I’ve heard larger numbers – like $197M – when you include other compensation, but can’t confirm that number.)
Someone said that if he took only $25M/year in pay (“only”), he could pay for health insurance for every Minnesotan not now covered. Instead, he hosts big fundraisers for Bush…
the bum deal here too is that NPR doesn’t pay its interns anything. Twice in the last year, I was down to the final round of interns (I did a telephone interview). Both times, I didn’t get the job because I admitted that I would only work 30 hours per week (as opposed to the 40 they obviously wanted) because it would already be a stretch to live in DC and I’d want to get a job somewhere. They never required 40 (but did give me that as the reason I didn’t get the job the second go around), but they obviously needed/wanted that.
It does bum me out that public radio (or any business, really) can pay a CEO that much and not at least provide a modest living stipend for interns. Even $200 a month for the 3 months I’d be there (so, a $600 outlay) would have been enough for me to say “sure thing!” basically, the $600 would have paid for a little more than one month of subletting in a crappy DC apartment, but even a sliver of a bone is better than nothing.
Roger is presuming the conclusion of the argument he should be making: that it is impossible to get somebody to run NPR competently at a price less than what Kling receives. There is good reason to believe that executive salaries are inflated pretty much in all industries due to the collective self-interest of the people who fix the salaries (who are, ultimately, paying themselves what they want to be paid). If you graphed executive compensation vs. corporate profits (or median wage, or whatever your statistic of choice would be), you would see that the greatest growth in the past 20 years has been in executive compensation.
What PZ is saying, and I agree, is that the argument that this elevated level of executive compensation is due entirely to market forces is becoming increasingly difficult to believe. A non-profit, in particular, ought to be a bit more concerned about its public image in this respect, since it relies so much upon donations for its funding. Telling people who earn less than $50k/year that it’s imperative that MPR hire somebody for 10 times that price is likely to lead to unbelieving guffaws.
“I bet most academics given a choice between doing the same job at $200,000 or $80,000 a year would take the $200,000 job no matter the institution.”
All things being equal, perhaps. But, in general they aren’t equal. Working for Clear Channel vs. public radio is like working for a tobacco company vs. a university (a post PhD choice which biologists can make). Sure, the for-profits pay more (way more), but is that worth the loss of prestige among scientific peers and the loss of a sense of “doing good” which motivates most academic researchers? If you want to talk in economic jargon, you need to consider all the “utils” that academics and non-profit workers get from being proud of what they are doing. Often this is a greater number of “utils” than a greater salary brings.
People freaked out when they found out that the CEO of the Nature Conservancy (a multibillion dollar organization) makes that kind of money. And that is here in DC, which I’ll bet is a good sight more expensive that Minnesota. So yes, that does seem a bit excessive to me. According to today’s Washington Post, the CEO of our Metro system gets 235k per year. I would guess that running a Metro system is harder and more complex than running a radio station (and if the radio station stops broadcasting, well, so what, but if the trains stop running…). Now I would say that the CEO for Metro should get more than 235k. Maybe that’s why our Metro system is dying. But I would certainly say that the CEO of MPR is getting too much in terms of the responsibilities of the job, the size of the organization, and the geographical location. But doesn’t the problem start with a board of directors who acceded to the salary demand?
So board of trustee members make $100K. That confirms what I said. There is a culture of back-scratching at all corporate boards. They help each other make ridiculous salaries. If you think it’s impossible to get good people to run large corporations for less than they are paid in the US, try checking what comparable officers at comparable companies in Europe and Japan make. And somehow those companies can compete the socks off US companies in most cases. It must not be the American managers’ fault. It must be those overpaid workers.
And, by the way, do you think MPR gives Prairie Home Companion away? Every station that runs it pays a wad of money for it.
I seriously have to question whether any of the people claiming this have ever run a business or a non-profit or have any clue at all what’s involved in hiring people or the needs of having good management.
Yes. I’ve worked at management levels in non-profits for the last two decades, for one. Our host here – you know, they guy who posted the thing that prompted your response? – is on the board of directors of a non-profit, for two. And I’d bet there are more of us here.
And I seriously have to question whether you actually have an argument if you resort to the “you disagree with me, so you must be unqualified” trope.
High salaries or not, they’re still the best news organization left besides PBS, and they’re keeping the hard-right vampires at bay.
I hope that never changes.
In other words, they may be bastards, but they’re our bastards.
“Should we all stop donating to universities until their coaches and professors start working for fifty percent (or more) less?”
Why, yes! And then we can repeat the procedure until they’re working for a quarter of their original salary! And again, and again…
With cost-cutting measures like these, soon public radio will be 100% efficient: none of its expenditures will be a waste. Of course, that’s because it won’t have any, having been bought out by a for-profit organization.
I think some people here are confusing MPR and NPR.
PZ is talking about Minnesota Public Radio, not National Public Radio.
I don’t know how big an operation Minnesota Public Radio is, but I’d guess it’s quite a bit smaller than National Public Radio.
If my understanding is correct, MPR is the second biggest PR in the nation.
High salaries or not, they’re still the best news organization left besides PBS,
No, that’s not true. They (and I assume we’re talking NPR here) might be the best traditional news organization left, but they’re far from the best when you count in alternative sources. As an example, fire up iTunes and subscribe to Democracy Now’s daily show. You’ll find it’ll blow NPR’s news summary out of the water.
Re: the college sports analogy: no, I wouldn’t expect any of of us here to donate to the athletic department. When donating to a university, you can choose where exactly your money is going. Not so with public radio, as far as I know…?
Er… I’m not sure what the complaint is, really. Different markets pay different salaries. I’m certainly not pleased that doctors, lawyers and plumbers make as much as they do, but they provide a service that people apparently think is worth the money. If you can explain why any lawyer is worth $400/hr. that would be cool, but the upshot is that people get paid what the market will bear.
I think there’s this impression that “non-profit” means that everyone that works for the organization has to be a wild-haired idealist willing to live off of beans, rice and the power of conviction. Thing is, it’s a job. People work at jobs for all kinds of reason, including money, security, and personal fulfillment. Demanding that you PICK ONE!! seems sort of oppressive. Can you work at a non-profit, do a great job that expands the corporation, and still make a good salary? Or is that only reserved for plumbers?
I write software for a living in Minneapolis, and I make a salary in the low six figures. This is well above the city’s average salary, but that’s because people value my services more. What I DO isn’t inherently more useful – I don’t accomplish any more in a day than your high school janitor, but that’s the way my industry works.
I guess all I’m saying is, saying all non-profits must adhere to the same financial standards is like saying all for-profits must as well. I have a friend that works at a non-profit that advocates for victims of torture. He gets paid nearly nothing. It’s a shame, but people don’t seem to get the same entertainment value out of helping torture victims as, say radio programs, so they contribute less. Nurses get paid less than advertising execs, and for some reason cab drivers make less than NASCAR drivers. Go figure.
I don’t like it much either, as it grates against my hippy liberal leaning brain, but every day we pay people far more than they probably deserve. But if you listen to MPR, you like the programming and like the impact it has on your day and life… what’s the problem?
“And I seriously have to question whether you actually have an argument if you resort to the “you disagree with me, so you must be unqualified” trope.”
Ah, so is that trope illegitimate when it’s rolled out against creationists now as well? I’m just saying the same logic applies: when something is outside your normal field or experience, and you rush in to pass judgement on it, oftentimes you end up making all sorts of misjudgements. I didn’t say anyone must be unqualified or even that it’s impossible the salaries are out of whack. I just said that from other things that people have said (like the surprise that non-profits can “make” a lot of money or pay their employees anything even approaching the going corporate rates) suggest not having a lot of experience with non-profits, which normally should be a warning sign to people that maybe they aren’t in possesion of all the facts and context to make good judgements.
Again, even if MPR was a for-profit and paid all it’s people exorbitant rates, I’m still not sure why I follow the argument that it’s bad to donate to them. They work on sort of the honor system with their consumers. They can’t know who is listening, so they rely on people who enjoy their programing to donate membership fees out of appreciation. Don’t want to? Fine. But that’s freeloading, not making any sort of coherent statement about their business practices. Making a statement would be not listening.
I don’t buy the business world stereotype that you have to be greedy to be talented.
I don’t know how big an operation Minnesota Public Radio is, but I’d guess it’s quite a bit smaller than National Public Radio.
From MPR’s own site, Minnesota Public Radio as of 2005 had 367 FT and 22 PT employees. But overall, the American Public Media Group (which includes MPR, America Public Media, The Fitzgerald Theater, etc.), has a total of 518 FT and 28 PT employees.
NPR in comparison has somewhat more than 700 employees according to CareerBuilder.com, so APM/MPR is not significanly smaller than NPR, granted this is a quick bit of research on my part.
First of all NPR is not a station but a radio program producer and distributor including “Car Talk”, “Fresh Air”, “On the Media”, etc.
As is Public Radio International, which distributes “This American Life”, “The World”, “Studio 360”, “BBC World Service”, “Sounds Eclectic”, etc.
Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media is both station, program producer/distributor (“Prairie Home Companion”, “Splendid Table”, “Pipedreams”, “Marketplace”, etc.) That means they have three of their own radio stations, but they also market their original programming to other stations.
I hope that clears up some confusion.
Ah, so is that trope illegitimate when it’s rolled out against creationists now as well?
Absolutely, which is why no one of importance does it. Biologists ask creationists to provide evidence for their claims, and to make testable claims. It’s a level playing field. That’s completely different from what you were doing.
If I were (say) deciding between UMM and Stanford, I’d be concerned with facilities (in my case, computational infrastructure and libraries) rather than my salary, to be honest. Does the same apply to media CEOs?
This may not have been the intention, but I have to laugh at the salary numbers thrown out re: academic scientists.
80K vs. 200K?
That’s, umm, not quite the range of options typically on the table.
I don’t know about UMM, or even at that UM. But here are some quick and dirty, out-of-context facts from the latest salary survey at my school, a different UM:
None of these figures include any outside consulting gigs. I’m pretty sure at least one of the head basketball coaches rents his name and likeness to advertisers. I have no idea how much money any of the biology professors might make on the side.
OK, we have demonstrated that the issue is philosophical. I think we have to agree that it is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that the MPR guy is grossly overpaid. So are football and basketball coaches at most public universities. So are the highest officers and board members of big American corporations, like GM and Ford. The rest is argument for the sake of argument: you will not convince me otherwise, and I will not convince you otherwise.
On the other hand, we could carry out an experiment. Hire a good person at half the salary to head MPR and see how it does over, say, five years. They could tout the fact in their fund drives: “We value this service so much that we have cut our own top officers’ compensation in half.” Then compare before and after. Don’t bother with coaches. I couldn’t care less whether the football program is successful. I would love to see how that experiment would work with huge companies that are busy cutting payrolls and trying to dump retirement obligations but don’t seem too eager to cut upper managment benefits.
“Somebody convince me that the idea of “you have to pay nonprofit heads a huge salary to get good quality people as CEOs” is something more than just indoctrination by the cult of the current American business model. And you’re not allowed to say, “if you don’t pay that much they could just go work for ClearChannel.”
I could see $100,000. I could see $175,000. I could even see 200k. But not 500k. But maybe I’m living in a cave?”
Ben & Jerry’s had a policy for a CEO salary cap at 7 times that of the lowest-paid employee, and ended up having to raise that factor several times (and I think I heard that it’s been abandoned since they sold out to Unilever) in order to get a qualified CEO. (They raised the cap when Robert Holland became CEO in 1995, and they ended up replacing him and raising the cap again to hire Perry Odak in 1997.)
Large nonprofits typically do pay high CEO salaries, though there are some exceptions (like Curtis Welling of AmeriCares, who takes home less than $300K while running an organization with annual revenue close to $1B–that charity spends an unbelievable 98.9% of its revenue on programs and 0.4% on administrative overhead and 0.7% on fundraising).
CEOs who take home nominal amounts of salary pay (e.g., Steve Jobs’ $1/year from Apple Computer) typically make up for it with other forms of compensation (e.g., Jobs has been given hundreds of millions in stock compensation and a Gulfstream V jet worth around $100M; Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com gets around $75K/year salary, but is a multi-billionaire in Amazon.com stock).
The average CEO salary in 2000 was 571 times that of the average hourly employee:
http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/a/CEOsOverpaid.htm
Really now, expecting people to get by on a mere $100,000 a year is justy imbecilic. How the fuck is the average CEO supposed to make ends meet on a salary like that? I mean, rich folks like you or me might be able to sacrifice pay for a job we like, but $100,000 a year just simply will not feed a CEO’s family.
Chief Executive Officiating is a dangerous, smelly job that often leads to chronic injuries and offers almost no chance of advancement. Benefits are almost non-existant. The idea that it would be a worthwhile job if it only paid two or three times as much as the average worker’s salary is absurd.
We’re not talking about a glamorous job like meat-packing or textile manufacturing; We’re talking about a job that would make Upton Sinclaire spontaneously combust. And you people just flippantly want to reduce their salaries.
I bet you all call yourselves progressives, too.
Thanks, arensb.
Your numbers sort of proved my point, but wait around for the UM figures.
Given that the salaries you quoted work out to total compensation packages starting in the low one hundred thousands, and go up to almost half a million dollars, I ‘m having a hard time getting upset over a similar package for the CEO of MPR.
And for what it’s worth, the football coach at UM makes 1.65 million, with a performance bonus package of another 750K. The basketball coach makes 706K, and that doesn’t include income from shoe contracts or basketball camps.
When PZ works up the same outrage over his own employer’s compensation practices as he does over MPR’s, then maybe we can take him seriously.
Ummm, you think I’m not pissed off about the fact that the coaches around here make far more money than I do?
Here’s an interesting article on MPR the City Pages ran a few years ago:
Money Public Radio
“From a financial standpoint, there would seem to be no reason for the fund drives, which are pitched to listeners by on-air personalities as a civic duty. After all, the network has primary access to endowments and investments totaling more than $130 million that, in 2000 alone, generated $8.5 million in revenue. Throw in another $4.3 million in state and federal aid and MPR ends up with a whopping $12.8 million in annual income, just standing still. To top it all off, in fiscal year 2000 MPR took in $7.4 million more than it spent, which, coincidentally, is almost the exact amount it received from listeners.”
They put out a pretty good product so financially, more power to ’em, go nuts MPR. I just don’t think listeners should be duped into donating to a cause that doesn’t really need their money.
Chris Clarke “Absolutely, which is why no one of importance does it.”
Forgive me, but I consider PZ to be someone of importance.
I guess I’m just not sure how one reaches the conclusion that someone is overpaid. Compared to what?
“To top it all off, in fiscal year 2000 MPR took in $7.4 million more than it spent, which, coincidentally, is almost the exact amount it received from listeners.”
Now THAT is a good reason not to donate to them!
I’m sure a lot of people would think that no matter what a atheistic biology professor in the minnesota univ system is paid, it is far too high.
I would just like to say that my job for the past 20 years has been to “fix” non-profits which have driven off into a ditch and if non-profits were willing to pay for competant people to work for them at a salary even close to private sector Id probably be out of a job.
It’s all well and good to insist that non-profit workers make less and enjoy the intangible awards supposedly inherent in their job but what this usually means is that you are going to have management who does this but secretaries and volunteers who cannot afford to feed their familes on moral conviction – ie. a high turnover rate in the data entry jobs, secretarial jobs, etc. So you get people who cant find anything else or “nice” people who arnt qualified for their jobs.
If you want to argue too big a disparity between what CEO’s and board at a non-profit make vs other people there then Im all for it because the non-profit seems to exemplify the stupidity of shirking on basic items.
The corporate world does this too, in long shifts based presumably on economics – sometimes they are hiring well above minimum wage and sometimes not for entry-level minimum wage positions.
In addition to the seemingly-constant membership drives, MPR unfortunately also runs an awful lot of commercials. Of course, they don’t call them commercials; they have some other politically-correct term.
The last straw for me was when “the Klingon Empire” swallowed up St. Olaf College’s WCAL. Nothing wrong with the format of “The Current” (and I agree with an above commenter’s observation about a “contempory Christian” format that might have happened). But I wish the birth of “The Current” hadn’t been the death of WCAL. That station had wonderful programming. I miss it terribly.
Oh, well….