Some salaries at public universities in Kansas exceed $250,000

Editor's note: A previous version of this story should have made clear that some salaries for public university employees include non-state funds, such as private donations, grants or other revenue.

Sixty public university employees in Kansas earned more than a quarter-million dollars in wages between July 2012 and this June, salary information recently obtained by The Eagle shows.

Of those, three-quarters were professors or administrators of the University of Kansas – the largest state-funded university – while Kansas State University had eight $250,000-plus earners and Wichita State University had five.

At Fort Hays State University and Pittsburg State University, only the president drew a paycheck that topped $250,000.

Emporia State University had none.

The salary information, available on Kansas.com, lists the annual compensation rate for more than 19,000 state-paid employees on the books at Kansas’ six public universities during their last fiscal year. It also shows that:

Thirty-seven of the 45 KU employees who had annual pay rates more than $250,000 worked for KU Medical Center.

The salary of the highest-paid employee, KU Medical Center executive vice chancellor Doug Girod, was $687,000 – more than three times that of Emporia State president Michael D. Shonrock’s salary of $226,153.

Former WSU President Donald Beggs earned $282,150 in the year following his June 2012 retirement, working as a consultant to his successor. Only current President John Bardo earned more.

The median income for listed university employees was $41,100 – about $9,500 less than the median household income of all Kansans, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data.

Nearly 24 percent of listed employees were in some sort of professorship role, earning a median income of about $73,000.

Heads of the state’s three smallest universities earned thousands less than their counterparts at the larger institutions.

The pay rate for about 6 1/2 percent of university workers was $100,000 or more.

Kansas Board of Regents spokeswoman Breeze Richardson said several factors, including a region’s cost of living, help determine employee pay.

“University salaries are based on the market rate of salaries at institutions of similar classification, the rank of the position, the discipline a professor is teaching, and a professor’s productivity,” she said.

She added that “a demand, as in other occupations, for certain kinds of professors” – engineers, for example – can also impact a paycheck.

Some of the salaries include compensation from private or outside sources. Non-regents and inactive employees, retirees, resident workers, national guardsmen, members of a home and students were excluded.

Go to Kansas.com to view a searchable database of university salaries.

Top 10 earners

The Wichita Eagle has obtained a list of annual pay rates for employees at Kansas’ six public universities during its last fiscal year (July 2012 to June 2013). Here are the Top 10 earners at each school for that time. KU Medical Center employees are listed separately.

This story was originally published November 16, 2013 at 11:36 PM with the headline "Some salaries at public universities in Kansas exceed $250,000."