Hitt one of nation’s top earners

President John Hitt has been listed as one of the 10 highest-paid university presidents in the nation, according to a report released earlier this week by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Hitt's total salary in the 2009-10 fiscal year was $800,703, ranking him No. 4 in the nation. He ranked fourth in what the report calls "total cost of employment," which includes salary, retirement, housing and car allowances.

Without bonuses and deferred compensation, he ranked ninth, with a total salary of $673,500.

Hitt, 70, was the only university president in Florida to make the top 10.

E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, was first on the list with a total compensation of $1.3 million.

Florida limits the amount of public money going into a university president's pay to $225,000 a year. Any additional money the president receives comes from private money.

Sean Snaith, director of the UCF Institute for Economic Competitiveness and a nationally recognized economist, said Hitt's pay makes sense considering the amount of time Hitt has held his position, the size of the university and what he's done for UCF.

"The market rewards schools that do well," he said. "Wages reflect difficult activity in his case, and the complexity of his task is in proportion to the size of the institute."

Hitt has been president of UCF since 1992 and is the longest-serving public university president in the state and among the most tenured in the nation, according to Grant Heston, assistant vice president of UCF News and Information.

Heston defends Hitt's salary, saying that it's noteworthy because of specific things Hitt has done during his leadership including the increase in research funding, the growth of the College of Medicine and the completion of an on-campus stadium.

UCF enrollment, the second-highest in the nation, has doubled since Hitt arrived. Graduation rates and the average scores of incoming freshmen have increased also.

"Dr. Hitt's accomplishments on behalf of UCF and the community during the past 19 years are remarkable. His leadership has been, and continues to be, one of our region's greatest assets," Heston said. "The UCF system promotes financial accountability by directly tying compensation to the university's strategic goals."

According to Heston, the system for tying his pay with meeting certain goals that improve the school was initiated by the UCF Board of Trustees in 2006-07 and unanimously approved by the full board.

With budget cuts, program cuts and increases in the cost of going to school, some students wonder if such a high a pay is fair.

Andres Lopez, a general business major who works for Event Services in the Student Union, said he isn't shocked at Hitt's salary.

"It's hard to defend that kind of pay check when students have to deal with increased fees and tuition," Lopez said.  "If he gets that kind of money for doing his job by making the school better, well those improvements are a group effort among the school's faculty and staff so more people should benefit."

SGA senator Thomas Hellinger, who chairs the governmental affairs committee in SGA, agrees with Lopez to some extent.

"I think the amount of money that we're paying President Hitt is an insult to the many faculty members that are at least equally responsible for UCF's successes," Hellinger said. "I think the argument that such morally outrageous levels of compensation are justified falls flat when one considers that the exact same argument was applied to the CEOs that brought about the greatest economic disaster of the last several generations."

Graham Austin, a senior economics and political science major, believes Hitt's pay is justified.

"He exceeded the goal of getting $250 million for the medical school by $50 million. Someone who raises that much for the university should be motivated to stay here," he said. "Good leaders get good pay or they get taken."