THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9407310052
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 142 lines
It's not stocks and bonds, but academia can be big bucks for a lucky few: At least 40 local college administrators and professors earn six-figure incomes.
The highest-paid academic in Hampton Roads is Gary D. Hodgen, 51, the president of the Eastern Virginia Medical School's Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine. In the 1992-93 school year, he received $604,891.
That comes to nearly $12,000 a week - or roughly $300 for every hour he works. It would take the annual tuition of 50 medical students to equal that pay.
Four of his colleagues at EVMS get more than $175,000 a year, not including earnings from their practices, a Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star survey found.
Among them is the best-compensated college president in the region, Edward E. Brickell, who was paid $240,782 in 1992-93. That's almost the combined pay of Norfolk's two university presidents - James V. Koch of Old Dominion ($134,819) and Harrison B. Wilson of Norfolk State ($120,655).
The scale for the rest of the presidents predominantly reflects the prestige of the schools. Second to Brickell is Timothy J. Sullivan of the College of William and Mary, the second-oldest college in the country. He gets $153,027. On the bottom is Jerome J. Friga of Paul D. Camp Community College in Franklin, at $68,142.
State-supported colleges are required to release current salaries of all employees. Private institutions, such as the medical college, must list the pay of their ``officers'' and five highest-paid employees on IRS 990 tax forms, which are open for public inspection. The last one that most schools have filed covers the 1992-93 school year. Hampton University, however, does not list the pay of President William R. Harvey on its form.
EVMS' Hodgen, a nationally knownresearcher in fetal-tissue research and human reproduction, said the $604,000 figure is hardly his standard pay. ``I've never had that much income in any other year,'' he said last week.
In fact, in the previous year, Hodgen was listed as receiving less that half that amount - $294,046.
The windfall last year, he said, came primarily from a share in the medical school's sale of a few patents based on his research - including a birth-control-pill schedule to avoid the side-effect of bleeding and an ``estrogen-replacement therapy'' for older women.
``Our bottom line is not calculated in dollars and cents,'' he said, ``but the institution shouldn't be expected to simply give its intellectual property away.''
Hodgen grew up poor on an Indiana farm and remembers countless ``Spam and fried potatoes'' dinners during his college years while his wife, Linda, worked as a loan officer to support him. Now he's got a house in Ghent and a beach house in Virginia Beach. But he doesn't own any stock - too much bother.
The subject of pay, to him, is almost irrelevant. He doesn't avoid questions about it. But he'd rather discuss new therapies for women's health or the growth of the med school since he joined in 1984. ``It is what it is,'' he said of the money. ``Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less. But it's more than sufficient.''
Hodgen left the National Institutes of Health, where he was chief of the pregnancy-research division, to go to EVMS, spurning an offer from Harvard. Among more than 60 plaques, citations and letters filling the walls of his office is a blowup of a 1988 U.S. News & World Report story. It listed him among three dozen up-and-coming movers and shakers in the health professions.
His salary hardly surprises Marian Osterweis, vice president for the Association of Academic Health Centers. ``There are some strong researchers who earn those kinds of salaries; that is fairly typical,'' she said. ``. . . It is great prestige value to have a name researcher so that they command very high salaries.''
Brickell, the EVMS president, was on vacation and could not be reached late last week. But his salary, too, is no shock to insiders: It's almost exactly the industry average for medical school presidents - $239,800, according to the association.
And it's midway between the salaries of his counterparts in Virginia. Dr. Hermes Kontos of the Medical College of Virginia and Dr. Robert M. Carey of the University of Virginia Medical School get $247,241 and $233,500, respectively.
Aside from Hodgen and Brickell, the others at EVMS who earned more than $175,000 were Dr. Raymond Adelman, chairman of the pediatrics department, who got $243,814; Dr. James Etheridge Jr., who was then dean of the medical school, $207,797; and Dr. Aaron Vinik, professor of internal medicine, anatomy and neurobiology and research director of EVMS' Diabetes Institutes, $195,049.
``People do say it's an outrage,'' Osterweis said. ``But what you have is a reflection of broader society and the way that physicians are reimbursed in comparison with other professions. You'll find professors of medicine getting paid more than professors of English, deans of medicine getting more than deans of arts and sciences, and similarly up the ranks.''
The statistics on U.S. faculty reflect the huge differential: The average professor of neurology gets $146,400 a year, the average economics professor $68,015.
Ironically, though, neither Hodgen nor Brickell is a physician. Hodgen got his doctorate in endocrinology, and Brickell, a former Virginia Beach schools superintendent, got his in education.
At several institutions, such as Norfolk State and Virginia Wesleyan College, the president gets the top salary and no one else on campus earns six figures.
But some presidents, like Brickell, aren't the top earners on their campuses. At William and Mary, Sullivan ranks second to the man who has replaced him as law dean - Thomas G. Krattenmaker, who earns $165,000.
``If you want to get the best legal minds in the country,'' college spokesman Ray Betzner said, ``you have to compete not only with other law schools, but with the private sector. Someone like a law school dean could be a senior partner in a major metropolitan law firm and could easily earn twice what his salary is'' at William and Mary.
At ODU, Richard Ringeisen, dean of the College of Sciences, is listed as earning about $1,000 more than Koch, or an annual total of $135,855. But Ringeisen said the number was inflated because a grant for Navy research, which he had begun before coming to Old Dominion in 1993, was overstated in the last school year. He said he annually gets $123,000: $105,000 as dean and $18,000 for the research.
Gordon K. Davies, director of the State Council of Higher Education, stressed that the six-figure club is still a tiny minority in higher education.
``It seems to me important, as we look at all of this, not to forget the rank-and-file community college professor who's out there teaching six courses a semester and is making $35,000 a year,'' he said. ``There are many more of them.
``For every person in a professional school whose salary is substantially in the six figures, there are probably 10 or more who are Working Joes and Working Janes.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
Photos
ANNUAL SALARIES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF HAMPTON ROADS COLLEGES
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: COLLEGES COLLEGE PRESIDENTS SALARIES by CNB