Face The State Staff Report
As news spreads that the University of Colorado at Boulder's Chancellor, G.P. "Bud" Peterson, will leave his $363,478 a year post to serve as president of Georgia Tech, he does so as just one of more than 2,000 CU employees to earn over $100,000.
Facing a $1 billion budget shortfall over the next 18 months, Gov. Bill Ritter has proposed several funding "solutions", one of which is a $225 million cut for education.
CU leaders, including President Bruce Benson say they are bracing for future changes. "Right now we're trying to take a strong role on how we are going to fund higher education," Benson told the Rocky Mountain News last month. "We're going to get out in front of this thing. Somebody's got to stand up and say, 'OK, we're charging the hill, and it's in that direction, so let's go."
CU, which has campuses in Boulder, Colorado Springs, downtown Denver, and the medical school in Aurora, maintains a searchable salary database for all university employees. The names of employees are not linked to the salaries, but employee ID numbers are given along with a position description and the department.
Limiting the search to annual salaries over $100,000 reveals the following numbers: of CU's 14,901 employees, the Denver campus, which includes the medical school, has 1,348 positions paid at least $100,000, the Boulder campus 623, 59 in Colorado Springs, and an additional 57 positions for system-wide administrators. The figures do not include benefits, including health insurance, meaning that employees listed as earning under $100,000 could actually be receiving more than that in total compensation packages. An additional 1,282 CU positions garner between $80,000 to $100,000 annually.
The total pay is also broken down by state-funded dollars and non-state funded dollars. For example, at the Boulder campus the top paid person is in the chancellor's Office is Peterson, with a salary of $363,478 that includes a $10,000 annual car allowance. This salary is 100 percent funded with state dollars. In contrast, the second highest paid person is in the athletic department, with an annual salary of $297,709, receives no state funding. The highest paid position in the university system is the president, and his salary of $378,000 is funded entirely with public money.
Aside from administrators, those with the highest salaries are professors and researchers in the medical school. Ninety-nine people in the medical school receive salaries over $300,000 annually, only 28 of which receive no state funding whatsoever.
Five employees in the Boulder Chancellor's office make more than $100,000 a year, together totaling an annual taxpayer investment of $1,176,108.