Link UH raises to performance

Over the last few years, the University of Hawaii’s leadership has come under blistering criticism from state legislators waving a list of grievances: The “Wonder Blunder” fundraiser fiasco; the perpetual budget deficit of UH-Manoa’s athletics department; the shiny new Cancer Center in Kakaako, plagued by mismanagement and unsustainable operating costs; and the embarrassment of campus facilities crumbling from long neglect.

Confidence in UH management was low, and bills were introduced to restrict UH’s ability to manage itself. One would have restricted the UH president’s authority over construction contracts; another would have required UH to eliminate some low-enrollment programs to cut costs; yet another attempted to reverse a constitutional provision that gives the Board of Regents semi-autonomy over the UH system.

Such attempts by the Legislature to micromanage a major research university system is an obviously bad idea. Control of UH operations properly resides with its Board of Regents, which sets the priorities for the university and ensures that its managers meet those goals.

On Thursday, the regents made one of those priorities clear: At the request of UH President David Lassner, it approved pay raises for nearly 200 of UH’s top executives, at a cost of about $1 million.

The salary increases are necessary to “make sure UH remains competitive in a highly competitive market,” said UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl. “We want to continue to be a top tier 1 research institution. If you look at this from a national scale, we are getting a bargain from extremely qualified individuals.”

Fair enough, except perhaps the part about “getting a bargain.” Based on the most recent salary survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, it appears the raises are roughly within the salary norm — some salaries are comfortably higher than the national median, some are not.

In any event, with the approved raises, the public rightly can assume that UH’s senior managers are being properly compensated for running a “top tier 1 research institution” — and should be held to account when UH fails to operate at that high level.

State Rep. Isaac Choy, chairman of the House Higher Education Committee and a fierce critic of UH management, doesn’t think they should get a raise at all.

“I don’t believe they deserve raises,” he said in an interview. Rather, they should get pay cuts because UH “is in the bottom quartile of almost every ranking.”

Choy’s position makes sense if the goal is to keep UH in the bottom quartile. But it’s not. The goal is to raise UH to the highest levels of academic excellence, and the ability to hire the best talent at the top is an indispensable component of those ambitions.

Furthermore, denigrating UH as a bottom-feeder is a careless generalization. The newly released Academic Ranking of World Universities 2015 placed UH in the upper half of the top 500 universities. Not breathtaking, but not bad either.

But Choy is right about another thing: Linking pay to performance.

“Increases in executive and managerial compensation must be tied to not only reaching performance goals and objectives of a very high rigor, but also for achieving distinction among peer groups,” he said in written testimony opposing the pay raises.

In a memo to the regents, Lassner said that 156 managers eligible for raises received superior or outstanding job performance ratings. The memo did not explain the basis for those ratings.

Certainly, pay increases should be tied to an employee achieving identifiable performance goals. It’s the norm for most employees.

As for UH’s highest-paid executives, who will receive anywhere from about $278,000 to more than $500,000 annually, their performance goals should be a matter of public record.

They should be aimed at achieving the university system’s primary obligation of providing its customers, from the lowliest undergrad to the top-level graduate student, with a quality of education that rivals similar institutions on the mainland. If not, we’re not getting our money’s worth.