Candidate rejects UI over pay
Kansas State provost says he was offered presidency
BOISE – Kansas State Provost Duane Nellis said Friday he turned down an offer to become the next University of Idaho president after Idaho’s Board of Education rejected his salary request.
Nellis said he had sought less money at Idaho than what he and his wife, a Kansas State employee, make together at that school, where they earn a combined base salary of $370,354 a year.
“I was not being unreasonable, in my opinion,” Nellis said.
Nellis is paid a yearly base salary of $272,116 as provost and his wife, Ruthie, makes a $98,238 base salary working in institutional advancement, said Kansas State spokeswoman Beth Bohn.
While none of the five finalists announced in January has been publicly offered the top job at Idaho’s oldest public university, Nellis said board leaders extended an offer to him Wednesday.
“I told them, given what they were offering me, I was turning them down,” Nellis said.
Board spokesman Mark Browning declined to discuss the salary negotiations with Nellis. He said an official offer to the next university president has to be made as the result of a vote in an open meeting.
Nationwide, median pay and benefits for presidents of public research universities rose 7.6 percent during the 2007-2008 school year to $427,400, according to an annual survey that the Chronicle of Higher Education released in November.
Former Idaho President Tim White was paid $291,912 in his fourth and final year, a salary “substantially below” the average for a research institution of its size and reputation, said Paul Fain, a senior reporter at the Chronicle who researches compensation of university presidents.
For example, the new president of West Virginia University will be paid a base salary of $450,000, Fain said.
White left the Moscow campus last year for a job at the University of California-Riverside. The UC Board of Regents approved a compensation package that will pay him an annual base salary of $325,000.
Now just three finalists remain: Montana State University Provost David Dooley; Don Burnett, dean of the University of Idaho Law School; and Larry Penley, former president of Colorado State University.