In less than a month, students will be reporting for fall semester classes at the public colleges that make up the state’s University System. I’m sure they will be a smarter group than the students who entered college with me back in my freshman days. We hope they will be a more diverse group as well, reflecting the state’s growing black, Latino and Asian populations.

Unfortunately for Georgia’s future, there will be fewer students attending our public colleges and universities than there were a couple of years ago. After growing to 318,000 students in 2011, the combined enrollment at public colleges declined to 314,000 in 2012 and then to 309,000 in 2013.  

Enrollment numbers aren’t dropping because the state’s colleges do a bad job of educating their students. Enrollment is declining because potential students are being priced out of higher education by endless tuition increases. A recent study by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association found that tuition and fees in Georgia’s public colleges increased by 93 percent during the period from 2008 to 2013—the only state that increased tuition more is New Mexico.

Part of the problem is that the legislature slashed funding to the University System over the past decade. The Board of Regents was compelled to make up for the funding cuts by raising tuition.

Another part of the problem, however, is that the University System refuses to reduce the money it spends on its top officials. The rank-and-file employees who worked for government agencies and school systems often were furloughed or laid off during the economic downturn of 2008-13, and those who could hang on to their jobs didn’t get a pay increase for years. Those cutbacks didn’t apply to the people at the highest levels of the University System.  

Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson will receive $773,646 in total compensation this fiscal year after getting a recent salary increase of $16,980. Georgia Regents University President Ricardo Aziz will be paid $675,379 after receiving a $25,379 bump in pay. Georgia State President Mark Becker will be paid $570,604, thanks to a $20,604 salary increase. University of Georgia President Jere Morehead will be paid $567,380, which includes a $17,380 pay hike. University System Chancellor Hank Huckaby, who got a $21,250 pay raise this year, will receive a total compensation of $518,250.

Then there is Michael Adams, who stepped down last summer after 16 years as the University of Georgia’s president. Normally, a state employee who retires would have to be content with drawing a pension. Not Adams. The Board of Regents agreed to pay him $2.7 million over the five-year period after he resigned.

Compare those numbers to the salary paid the governor of Georgia: $139,339 a year. Whether you like or dislike the governor, there is no argument that he holds the most important job in state government. He administers a yearly budget that totals about $42 billion in state and federal funds, and he decides how the state will provide vital services to its residents.

The top officials in the University System are eminently qualified people, but should they be getting paid four and five times what the governor makes when they hold jobs that are demonstrably less important than his?

Virginia Carson of South Georgia State College, the lowest-paid fulltime president in the University System, will make $193,974 this year for running a school with an enrollment of about 2,000 students. She will be paid 39 percent more than the governor, who runs a state government serving 10 million residents.

The average taxpayer would be justified in asking: Why? The promising high school graduate who can’t afford to attend one of our colleges might well ask the same question.

Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia Report, an Internet news service at gareport.com that reports on state government and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].