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Don't Cry for Ben Ladner
American University's notorious former president is still topping compensation charts, years after he resigned.
Published Monday, March 31, 2008
He may be gone, but his ghost lingers. American University officials couldn’t have been thrilled to see the name of Ben Ladner, who resigned in 2005 amid revelations of his luxury lifestyle, atop the Chronicle of Higher Education’s latest list of the nation’s best-paid private-college presidents. His $4,270,665 compensation package—mostly a very golden parachute—was lots more than that of the runner-up, Northeastern University’s Richard Freeland, who made $2.8 million.
Ladner’s package included $1,773,653 in deferred compensation, $963,125 in an insurance policy, $950,000 in severance, $240,079 in salary, $132,500 in incentive pay, and “other payments” of $124,525. American’s interim leader, Cornelius Kerwin, made $522,187 the year after Ladner left. Locally, the biggest winner was George Mason’s Alan Merten, who saw his pay rise from $228,543 in 2004–05 to $642,500 in 2006–07 thanks to two performance bonuses. Merten was second only to George Washington University’s Steve Trachtenberg, now retired, who made $706,133 in 2005. Other notables: UMd’s Dan Mote made $432,539. Georgetown’s Jack DeGioia made $589,849, just slightly more than Howard’s Patrick Swygert, who brought home $552,196. UDC’s William Pollard, who resigned in June 2007, made $235,657, and Southeastern University’s Charlene Drew Jarvis made just $192,483. At Catholic University, the Very Reverend David O’Connell’s $262,289 is paid to his religious order. The real winner of the higher-education pay system is the football coach: At Maryland, Ralph Friedgen made $1,691,864. And the list shows that whereas UVa president John Casteen made $731,672, his football coach, Al Groh, brought home a million more—$1,785,000. This article can be found in the April 2008 issue of The Washingtonian.
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Comments
Ben Ladner was a thief, plain and simple. He was guilty of gross negligence, mismangement, and for signing off on incompetence at WAMU that exhausted a $4 million endowment. Ladner lived lavishly, excessively, with $50-$100 bottles of wine at each meal, his son’s engagement party paid for, first class tickets for world travel that netted no real result for the university. All of this while AU raised tuition well past the rate of inflation and failed to grow its endowment significantly during Ladner’s reign. Ladner rode the gravy train until it derailed. Funny that AU, with its world-class political science, media and international programs would fall victim to its very own petty despot. For the nerds out there, Ladner embodied Mancur Olson’s "stationary bandit." I cannot fathom how AU’s board of trustees failed for so long, and so visibly. Not only did they ignore his prominent excesses, they signed off on a $3 million severance package when Ladner should have been fired outright and, possibly, prosecuted for misappropriation of university funds!
Posted by: Bye Bye Benny, Jul 07, 2009 01:17:51 PM
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09:26 AM/ET, 03/31/2008 in
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