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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Trachtenberg received $62,000 raise in 2003-2004

Over the course of a year, University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg received a $62,749 increase in salary and benefits, according to a report released last week by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the 2003-2004 school year, the most recent period included in the new report, Trachtenberg earned $704,113 in salary and benefits, compared to $641,364 in 2002-2003.

“Nobody becomes a president of a university for the money, so university president salaries only seem dramatic compared to other universities,” Trachtenberg told The Hatchet. “Compared to corporate (chief executive officers), this is relatively small. A university is a multi-million or billion-dollar company, and CEOs running corporations of this size get paid a lot more.”

In 2002-2003, Trachtenberg was the highest-paid University president in the nation’s capital and was one of 12 university presidents whose pay and benefits exceeded $600,000. In 2003-2004, dismissed American University President Benjamin Ladner, who made $814,177 in reported salary and benefits during that time, reclaimed the title of D.C’s highest-paid University president.

In 2003-2004, five presidential salaries topped the million-dollar mark, according to the Chronicle. Donald E. Ross, of Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., was the highest paid university president, earning more than $5.04 million in salary and benefits in 2003-2004.

GW’s Board of Trustees employs an outside analyst to make sure Trachtenberg and other executives are earning reasonable pay and spending money responsibility. After Ladner was forced to resign as president of AU last month amid allegations that he used university funds to finance personal expenses, GW hired independent auditors to review its accounting.

“We tend to have a prudent Board of Trustees. They are careful about these decisions, like Goldilocks: not too hot, not too cold,” Trachtenberg said of GW’s board, which determines his salary each year based on his work as president and the state of the economy. Trachtenberg, one of the longest-sitting college presidents in the nation, has presided over GW since 1988.

This year, the Chronicle reported on the increasing number of university presidents who serve on the boards of outside corporations. Trachtenberg was a member of the struggling Riggs Bank board until last year, when PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. bought the company. In 2004, Trachtenberg served as president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce.

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