Rising academic salaries for coaches

Even during the recession, salaries for athletic coaches at colleges and universities continued to increase.  For instance in the SEC, between 2006 and 2011, “football coaching salaries increased 128.9 percent, from $3,147,149 to $6,928,989.”  This is an extreme example but it reflects a more general pattern:

That big-time coaches earn more than professors may not be a surprise, but a new study documents the striking extent and longevity of the gap: Coaches’ salaries increase year after year at much higher rates — even as many colleges say they are engaged in belt-tightening across they board — and that pattern is driven by the institutions with the largest athletic programs.

…Athletics is tied much more closely to the commercial marketplace than all other parts of a university, Hirko said, which is why salaries and other expenses continue to rise at rates seemingly independent of the rest of the institution.

The full story is here.  Here is a must-view map on the highest-paid public employee in each state; what have Montana, Alaska, and Delaware done wrong?  (No wonder those states have so few people!)  And New Hampshire is beyond the pale.

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