Pay level leak prompts public outrage, angers rectors

Leaked pay statistics showing drastic increases in the salaries of university leaders have caused an uproar in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The disclosure comes while universities and the state government are squabbling over new higher education legislation.

Tenured professors attain civil servant status in Germany. Rectors in North Rhine-Westphalia are also entitled to freely negotiable performance-based supplements that are not made public.

This is a result of the ‘freedom in higher education’ law introduced by the state’s previous Christian Democrat/Free Democrat government. The law also provided for ‘higher education councils’, which are responsible for negotiating supplementary pay with rectors at institution level.

The present Social Democrat/Green government is now seeking to introduce ‘future of higher education’ legislation that would relocate authority to negotiate the supplementary salaries to state government level.

Most of Germany’s higher education legislation is dealt with at state level, and not by the federal government.

Figures published on the NachDenkSeiten website that appear to have been leaked from the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Higher Education suggest that in some cases, there have indeed been considerable increases in rectors’ salaries.

At RWTH Aachen University, Rector Burkhard Rauhut was earning €109,601 (US$150,000) in 2006, with €88,603 as a fixed salary and €20,998 negotiated as a supplementary payment. Ernst Schmachtenberg took over in 2008, and was on a €152,528 salary in 2012, comprising a fixed share of €99,016 and €53,512 freely negotiated.

The figures for Cologne University’s Rector Axel Freimuth, related to the same years, are €95,585 (with €88,603 fixed and €7,355 negotiated) and €136,450 (with €99,016 fixed and €37,434 negotiated).

There have been similar substantial increases at other traditional universities throughout the state, although salaries at the fachhochschulen – universities of applied science – have usually remained below the €100,000 threshold.

University rectors are furious about the document leak.

Freimuth believes it was intended to “bring rectors into disrepute”.

Schmachtenberg sees his pay as fully justified, given that he was earning much more as a researcher in Bavaria before he became rector in Aachen. “I’m glad I negotiated the way I did, and that I haven’t lost that much,” he commented.

A different view is taken by the head of the opposition ‘Pirates’ in the state parliament Joachim Paul, who claims that the salary increases are “disproportionately high” and accused rectors of displaying a “help yourself” attitude towards universities.

In contrast, the opposition Christian Democrats are calling for a full investigation into the leak. They suspect that it may have been initiated by Higher Education Minister Svenja Schulze of the Social Democrats.

“For the sake of credibility, investigations ought to perhaps start at the minister’s office,” said Christian Democrat parliamentary spokesman for higher education Stefan Berger.

The NachDenkSeiten site is published by Wolfgang Lieb, who used to be spokesman for Social Democrat Johannes Rau when he was heading the North Rhine-Westphalia government in the 1990s.

The present government plans to change a number of items in addition to the levels of rectors’ salaries.

It seeks to strongly restrict the scope that institutions have to do their own planning. They are not supposed to determine their subjects and teaching programmes independently. Instead, the government wants to have a say in this area so that it can implement long-term strategies in fields like teacher training.

Institutions have so far been able to decide how they spend the state’s higher education budget, which totals nearly €8 billion. “Now that money is scarce, we have to think twice about every euro we spend,” said Minister Schulze.

Another area that the government is concentrating on is third-party funding of research. Here, the government claims, who is spending how much on what has to be clear at the beginning of a research project.

Email: michael.gardner@uw-news.com

COMMENT

No basis for such uproar. Do they think having a PhD is that easy?

Richard Aghama Okundia on the University World News Facebook page