UM faculty — hit with pay cuts and over $100 million slashed from their retirement plans — fuming over $80 million deal for football coach #BecauseMiami https://t.co/d136qEmtBo
— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) December 10, 2021
UM faculty, hit with pay cuts, fuming over $80 million deal for star football coach Cristobal
As University of Miami students and alumni celebrate the hiring of a new football coach who has been touted as the program’s savior, not everyone is doing cartwheels on the Coral Gables campus. Many UM professors and other faculty — forced to teach in person and accept compensation cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic — are fuming and say staff morale has plunged. Some members of the UM Faculty Senate view Mario Cristobal’s $80 million contract as only the latest sign of the administration’s disrespect for the academic staff at the private university. As part of deep pandemic cutbacks, the university had slashed more than $100 million in its matching contributions to faculty members’ retirement plans in the 2020-2021 academic year. Now, some faculty believe those cuts have helped bankroll lavish spending on athletics and construction projects and could hurt the school academically.
UM’s financial fortunes have dramatically improved in the past year, according to top administrators and university audits. With aggressive personnel reductions and escalating profits from UM’s sprawling healthcare system, audits available through May 31, 2021 show earnings of more than $400 million at the nonprofit school. Although the university agreed to reinstate its matching contributions to the faculty members’ 401(k) retirement plans for the new academic year starting June 1, 2021, the administration rejected their request to restore those same benefits that had been cut in the previous year.
“If as a football coach he can actually bring $100 million dollars in value to the university, and that can be somehow spread and used by the academic institution, that’s great,” said a faculty member, who also didn’t want to be identified. “But you would be hard pressed to really justify that.” Cristobal’s 10-year deal will pay him $80 million, an annual salary alone nearly five times more than Frenk’s total compensation package of $1.75 million, according to UM’s latest IRS tax return for the academic year ending May 31, 2019. UM must also pay $9 million to buy out the remainder of Cristobal’s Oregon contract and another $4 million to cover the balance of Diaz’s contract. UM has also agreed to spend an additional $8 million to bolster Cristobal’s assistant coaching staff. UM’S HEALTHCARE EARNINGS Although top UM administrators say that the funds for Cristobal’s contract and related expenses will come from the university’s general coffers, the reality is that the robust earnings from its expanding healthcare system is expected to foot much of that massive bill, according to sources familiar with the plan. Overall, the university’s healthcare system in the fiscal year ending in May 2021 showed record revenue of about $2.6 billion from its hospitals, medical clinics and joint operating deal with the publicly owned Jackson Memorial Hospital — or two-thirds of UM’s total operating revenue. The Coral Gables university underwent a dramatic rebound after the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the latter half of 2020, the school laid off dozens of workers and eliminated its matching contributions to the faculty’s 401(k) retirement plans. The frozen 401(k) contributions alone resulted in excess of $100 million in savings for the university in 2020, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article256465056.html#storylink=cpy
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