I’m not one to begrudge chief executives who make a lot of money — even when they’re university presidents. Yet there’s something peculiar about learning that a figure such as University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman, who tries to package herself as a champion of the oppressed, pulls down more than $742,000 per year, not including the use of a university house and car. That’s an increase of nearly $18,000 over last year. How many other Michiganders, living in one of the country’s most economically depressed states, received such a raise? Heck, that could pay the tuition for a couple of the students that Coleman now thinks will be unfairly denied admission in the wake of the MCRI.

I’m also amused to read the protests of the AAUP’s Roger Bowen, who presumably performs his job for free, about presidential salaries:

“It’s the faculty member sitting on a log with a student talking about the meaning of life, for God’s sake,” Mr. Bowen said. “It should not be about money.”

Maybe there really is a financial crisis in higher eduction: Cut presidential salaries so we can get the students off the logs and into chairs!