UM System defends incentives paid to top administrators

University of Missouri System officials are defending more than $2 million in incentives that they paid out in the past few years.

“You’re not going to have a stable, excellent university when your top leaders are leaving for other opportunities where they’re going to get compensation packages that are more competitive,” said system spokesman John Fougere.

It was announced Monday that Missouri S&T chancellor Cheryl Schrader would be leaving her position there to become the president at Wright State University. Fougere said she was offered a “more competitive compensation package” to work for Wright State.

“Chancellor Schrader’s departure is only one of many in the past year,” said Fourgere. “We’ve also lost the CEO of the MU Health System and three vice presidents of finance and human resources, all for more competitive compensation packages.”

Mitch Wasden is the former CEO of the MU Health System and left last February. This past November, Brian Burnett, former President of Finance, left for the University of Minnesota. Two former Vice President of Human Resources, Betsy Rodriguez and Kelly Stuck, also left this past year.

But former member of the UM System Review Board Commission, Renee Holshuf, said while a competitive compensation package may be needed to retain top administrators, the details of those packages needed to be public and transparent: something Auditor Gallaway took issue with in her audit.

“Clearly they’re telling someone that they’re doing this when they’re recruiting but for it to have been discovered in an audit?” she said. “In an age where their feet are being held to the fiscal fire, they just have to be so very careful with that kind of thing. Be transparent. Lay it all out on the table.”

When the review commission laid out its final recommendations for the review system, Holshuf said they were largely to do with transparency. She said she was disappointed that more perceived openness and transparency issues have come to light.

“Anytime anything happens with an institution, it ought to be discoverable,” she said. “The university shouldn’t wait for people to come searching for it either.”

Fougere said the system will be using the audit as a way to improve their transparency to the public.

“If you take a look at the university system, the size and scope that we have, is everything going to be perfect? Absolutely not and there are areas we can improve on,” he said. “We have a new president who is absolutely committed to making sure that we every day come out and be as accountable and transparent as we can and we’ll use the auditor’s report to get better.”

Fougere said Monday that there were no specific plans in place to do that.