Oracle Online

$824,179. Tuition-paying students should cringe.

This put Hamline 16th in presidential salaries relative to the nation’s 832 private schools. It is important to remember, though, as Board of Trustee Chairman Ken Woodward said in the Star Tribune article, this huge jump in salary includes a $500,000 bonus. Woodward said President Hanson makes only about $300,000 a year, which will move good old HU much further down the list in the presidental income department.

Osnes was the university’s president for 17 years. He successfully led the university through the $150 by 150 campaign, which aimed to fundraise $150 million by the school’s 150th anniversary.

This isn’t the first time Osnes’s salary has been addressed. In February 2003, the Oracle reported that Osnes’s total compensation package was $361,311.86. The total prompted resolutions in HUSC to advocate for capping administrative salaries.

This compensation makes us sick. Haven’t we paid the man enough? Hamline is a tuition-driven university with a lackluster endowment which hovers around $65 million. President Linda Hanson has said on multiple occasions that she wants to double our endowment, and is currently working.

But this might not be so necessary if costs such as Osnes’s bonus were not handed out. Cut the fat, not our budgets. At a university that claims to be student-centered, it seems that this money could be spent in ways that would better benefit them.

Pay professors more. Invest in your students, for without them, you have no need for a president.