Another shocking, just shocking development that none of us had ever expected: as indicated in the AAUP’s annual report on salaries in higher education, coaches’ and administrators’ salaries have been grower faster than that of faculty. The NY Times and Slate noted the former, but did not report the latter.

Here’s the also entirely predictable reaction from Terry W. Hartle, lackey for university presidents senior VP of the American Council on Education, an organization that “represent[s] the presidents of U.S. accredited, degree-granting institutions.”

This comes from the American Association of University Professors, which has a vested interest in finding that too little money is going to faculty and too much to sports and administration…If you just look at the percentage increases, without the base they’re working from, it’s hard to tell what it means.

What Hartle conveniently fails to mention is that the AAUP actually compiled the data from the NCAA, the US Department of Education, the CUPA, and elsewhere, most of it self-reported by institutions.  And that his organization has a vested interest in increasing the pay of university presidents, who show just how wonderful they are to boards of trustees by cutting faculty or being “tough” on faculty raises.”  And, of course, he doesn’t actually address the data, just the source and the starting point, without considering the values involved in what the data mean.  This is the best that university presidents, ostensibly the leaders of our intellectual institutions, can come up with?  As Upton Sinclair aptly wrote, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Here’s my prediction: Hartle’s in for a nice raise next year.

For the actual charts, look below the fold.