Paying the UNC president a huge bonus for pleasing his bosses undercuts real leadership
The News & Observer’s veteran sportswriter Chip Alexander tells a story from the early 1970s about how then-N.C. State football coach Lou Holtz sought a reward after his successful first season.
Holtz sat down with Athletic Director Willis Casey and asked for a bonus for himself and his staff because his team had achieved an 8-3 record. Casey responded, “Bonus? What did you think I hired you for? To go 3 and 8?”
I thought of that anecdote when I read that the UNC Board of Governors has given UNC System President Peter Hans “a one-time incentive compensation” of $451,200 “for his extraordinary performance and leadership during the 2021-22 fiscal year.”
The money will be deposited in Hans’ account with the Senior Administrative Officer Retirement Program. It’s an amount larger than his base pay of $400,000. It makes you wonder, as Casey did, what is the UNC System paying Hans his base salary for? Ordinary performance and lukewarm leadership?
Hans’ total compensation of more than $800,000 is in line with what his predecessors received. The amount, while hefty, is not the issue. It’s the manner that’s a concern.
Can a leader really lead if half his compensation depends on pleasing his 24 politically appointed bosses on the Board of Governors? Or does he become a servant, unwilling to make unpopular calls or follow his own instincts when it may upset board members?
Board of Governors Chairman Randy Ramsey said the incentives have not inhibited Hans’ freedom to act on his own since he became president in June of 2020. He said, “President Hans works alongside our chancellors every day to support the range of great work they do across the state, and nothing about his incentive package constrains those actions.”
The Board of Governors has adopted metrics to track the president’s performance. Sixty percent of the assessment involves quantitative measures of student success, cost per degree and student debt. The remaining 40 percent reflects the board’s opinion of how effectively the system is being managed.
Hans did well on his report card, but his huge reward actually sets back a goal of sound management by adding to faculty members’ discontent about their own lagging pay.
Hans pleased his bosses by keeping UNC campuses open despite COVID-19 and helping get more UNC funding in the state budget, but he’s also president of a system that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) condemned this year after investigating complaints against UNC.
AAUP President Irene Mulvey said the investigation’s finding of “instances of broken governance, severe violations of academic freedom and patterns of institutional racism caused by long-standing political interference and cowardly top-down administrations speaks volumes about the severity of the underlying problems within UNC.”
Ramsey said, “The grim AAUP report simply ignored the reality of a public higher education system that is performing at a high level, serving a quarter-million students and maintaining bipartisan support from taxpayers and state elected officials.”
Fortunately for him, Hans’ evaluation does not include an assessment from the national faculty organization. But even on the Board of Governor’s own terms, the basis of awarding incentive pay is flawed.
Art Padilla, a vice president of the UNC System under former President Bill Friday in the 1980s, said contracts setting incentives began with coaches and now have spread to senior academic administrators.
While coaches’ records are clear, Padilla said, top administrators are given bonuses for results which they can’t directly control. Padilla, who as a professor headed the Department of Management at N.C. State University, said setting incentives for academic administrators “has never made any sense to me.”
Nor did it make sense to Willis Casey, but he could see the trend building. Alexander said Holtz got the bonus.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-829-4512, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
