Salary Freeze Announced for Faculty Earning Over $125k and Staff Earning Over $75k, Including MIT’s President
Faculty and staff salaries will be frozen next year for faculty making more than $125,000 a year and staff making more than $75,000 a year, President Susan J. Hockfield announced at Wednesday’s faculty meeting.
Hockfield herself will decline a salary increase this year and next year, she said. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007, Hockfield was paid $808,698, including $100,000 in deferred compensation, according to MIT tax forms. That was 7 percent more than her 2005–6 salary of $753,124, which also included $100,000 in deferred compensation.
The Institute plans to cut 5 percent of spending from its general operating budget, or $50 million, for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2009, the president and provost announced in November.
MIT also plans to reduce spending by another $50 million in the next year and another $50 million in the year after that, but only if endowment performance is poor, said Provost L. Rafael Reif. This would amount to spending cuts of up to $150 million over three years
Of MIT’s current $1.1 billion general operating budget, almost half, $512.3 million, is spent on employee salaries and benefits. Might the next three years see fewer people on payroll, or shorter hours?
A group called the Institute-Wide Planning Task Force has been charged with suggesting ways to cut costs. “[I]t is inevitable that the Institute will have fewer employees in the future,” the task force’s website says.