University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman spent $59,553 on travel and $70,593 on meals during the 2010 calendar year, according to a report by the Detroit Free Press. It is inevitable for a university president to accrue substantial expenses while conducting official business. Yet Coleman’s $130,146 in spending seems all the more extravagant when it is compared to that of other university presidents.
A look at the expense reports of other in-state university presidents provides some perspective: the heads of Oakland and Wayne State Universities both spent around $20,000 during the same period, and Michigan State’s president spent a little over $15,000. President Coleman accrued more than double the amount of those three other presidents–combined.
Coleman’s representatives have stated that her sky-high travel and expense budget reflects U-M’s far-flung alumni base and global prominence. They say that the need to foster international relationships justify Coleman’s frequent, and pricey, globetrotting. U-M does enjoy the benefits of partnerships with universities around the world, but if the current university administration is to be believed, maintaining those partnerships isn’t cheap. Take Coleman’s June 2010 trip to China. That jaunt alone cost $14,000.
Pressed further on the her travel expenses, Coleman replied, “Certainly the expectation has always been there to have the president be involved in development efforts. As we’ve seen a pretty dramatic drop every year in (state) funding, it’s more imperative that the president focus much more on development.”
It seems that everything–including ballooning budgets–can be pinned on Governor Snyder’s push for fiscal sanity. Although Coleman’s attempt to attribute her astronomical travel expenses to a decrease in state funding might fly with campus liberal anti-Snyder loons, students and taxpayers must demand both a better answer and more accountability in the future.
It is important to note that Coleman’s previous annual travel expenses were roughly $43,000 and $26,000 in 2008 and 2009, respectively, which makes 2010 quite an outlier. It is true that U-M suffered from declining state support over this period, but the decrease of $47 million was only 3-percent of the university’s revenues of $1.5 billion. It is hard to imagine that only a 3 percent drop would require such a substantial increase in travel in order to obtain more fundraising for the university.
In any event, Coleman’s world tour doesn’t appear to have increased U-M’s revenue by enough to avoid slapping students with a 6.7 percent tuition increase this year. Unless, of course, one applies the same logic that Obama employed to justify his stimulus–in which case Coleman’s jet setting prevented an even greater tuition rate increase.
Questions of effectiveness aside, Coleman’s travel consumes a large amount of her time–time that could otherwise be spent improving the university, spearheading cost-cutting initiatives, or simply earning her rather large salary through on-campus efforts more visible to the student body. Yet she is apparently so passionate about her international fundraising efforts that she declined an invitation from President Obama to join a small group discussion on the future higher education due to a busy travel schedule.
Ironically, Vice President Biden recent attributed rising college tuition to higher faculty salaries and universities’ administrative expenses. This comes as Democrats at both the state and federal level are fiercely resisting any salary or benefit cuts for the left-leaning teachers and professors who helped put them in office. Instead, they want to keep running the only plays in their book: hiking taxes and increasing subsidies.
Coleman’s giant expense and travel budget is just one example of the administrative excess to which Biden is referring. Although $130,000 may be only a rounding error in U-M’s budget, the figure highlights spendthrift mentality plaguing higher education. Rather than controlling costs to offer a better value to students, it is easier for them to rack up large bills and then bemoan unavoidable funding cuts.
Of course, U-M officials try to dispel the notion that they are reckless spenders by shamelessly flogging their few displays of fiscal restraint. When Coleman’s travel expenses dipped to $26,000 in 2009, University officials championed the decrease as Coleman’s way of acknowledging tough economic times. Based on last year’s expense of $130,000, however, it appears that Coleman believes those tough economic times have passed. It’s a shame that cash-strapped students and taxpayers haven’t yet received the news.
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