A new database published by Arizona Central that catalogs the salaries of public employees reveals that 199 of the top 200 highest-paid public employees work in higher education.
A database compiled by the Arizona Republic and published by Arizona Central allows Arizonans to look up the salary of any public employee in the state. The database shows 199 of the top 200 public earners in the state work in higher education.
Take, for example, Arizona State University head football coach Michael Graham, who makes $3.2 million each year. And Graham isn’t the only football coach with a multi-million salary that is paid for by taxpayers. University of Arizona head football coach Richard A. Rodriguez pulls in $2.48 million annually.
Men’s basketball coaches Sean E. Miller and Robert Hurley of the University of Arizona and Arizona State University each earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Last year, Miller of the University of Arizona earned slightly over a million dollars.
The rest of the top 20 earners in public positions are mostly college administrators. Robert Robbins, the president of the University of Arizona, for example, earns $800,000 each year. Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, earns $600,000 each year.
The database, which was highlighted this week by The College Fix, was compiled based on almost two dozen public records requests by the Arizona Republic newspaper.
Breitbart News reported last week that public educators in the state of Virginia vastly out-earned their peers in other sectors of public work. Laura Osberger, a spokeswoman for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, defended the exorbitant salaries for college officials.
“College presidents manage multi-million and sometimes billion-dollar enterprises that affect the lives of thousands of people. Thus, college and university compensation is a factor of a competitive market and complex work. In Virginia, the Boards of Visitors of our public higher education institutions negotiate the compensation packages of presidents,” Osberger argued.