
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 2, 1990                   TAG: 9007020098
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FAIRFAX                                LENGTH: Medium

PROFESSORS IRKED BY GMU SALARIES

George Mason University's practice of luring nationally known academicians to its faculty by offering six-figure salaries has stirred resentment among lesser-paid faculty members.

Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset last week became the latest prominent professor to accept a full-time position at the state-supported university.

In March, the young school hired Robert H. Bork, the rejected Supreme Court nominee, and Steven R. Ross, chief lawyer for the House of Representatives, to teach part time at its law school.

Last month, it named Manuel H. Johnson, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, to head a new institute.

By offering proximity to the nation's capital, an atmosphere of academic experimentation and lucrative pay, the university has been able to lure notables who normally might gravitate to Harvard, Yale or Stanford.

Some faculty members at George Mason, particularly low-paid part-timers, privately say that they are irked every time they see another celebrity professor added at two or three times their salaries.

Two Hispanic professors who filed federal discrimination complaints in April because they were denied tenure claimed that regular faculty members are shoved aside in favor of high-paid "superstars."

At George Mason, Bork will be paid $25,000 for teaching two courses, roughly five times the fee for the average adjunct professor. During the 1990-91 academic year, Johnson will be paid $120,000 and Lipset will be paid $139,000.

Those salaries, financed in part by private endowments from Northern Virginia's well-heeled development and business magnates, eclipse those of less stellar counterparts and, in Lipset's case, even university President George W. Johnson, who makes $125,246. Nationwide, the average faculty salary at public universities in George Mason's division is $40,140, and the average for full-time professors is $49,610.

In recent years, George Mason also has enticed Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan; federal appeals Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg; Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Roger Wilkins, the national coordinator for Nelson Mandela's U.S. tour; Soviet emigre author Vassily Aksyonov; Mexican author Carlos Fuentes; former Office of Management and Budget director James Miller; and anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson.

by CNB