Align Compensation with Mission, Market, and Means
The Casagrande Institute for Higher Education Effectiveness helps colleges and universities design compensation systems that attract talent, reward performance, and sustain financial health. Whether calibrating presidential pay, refreshing a faculty salary structure, or modernizing staff wage bands, we translate market data into strategies that advance institutional mission.
Manage Budget and Mitigate Risk
Personnel costs often account for 60–70% of an institution’s operating budget, so compensation decisions must be intentional. Clear pay philosophy, documented benchmarks, and disciplined administration reduce exposure to pay-equity claims, FLSA classification errors, and state pay-transparency requirements, while proactive monitoring helps prevent compression, inversion, and disparate impact. Our approach balances fiscal stewardship with fairness so leaders can defend decisions and sustain trust.
Transparent and Fair Compensation at Every Level
Executive Compensation
Presidents, vice presidents, and other senior leaders guide strategy, manage risk, and represent the institution’s public face. Their compensation must balance competitive positioning, internal equity, and growing scrutiny from regulators, accreditors, and the public. We help boards reach defensible, mission-aligned decisions that retain indispensable talent without inviting donor or media criticism. Our benchmarking process positions each executive's compensation within a group of similar executives with similar responsibilities at similar institutions, using data from IRS Form 990, CUPA-HR, and proprietary surveys with established reliability and validity. Our governance support aligns pay philosophy, performance metrics, and accountability. When required, our reports meet Internal Revenue Code § 4958 “rebuttable-presumption” standards by documenting process, comparability data, and independent review.
Faculty Compensation
Faculty salaries shape recruitment, retention, and academic excellence while signaling the institution’s commitment to internal equity and shared governance. We design salary architectures to be competitive, internally coherent, and transparent enough to build trust. Working with leadership, we define an appropriate comparison group and evaluate market data from IPEDS, AAUP, CUPA-HR, and discipline-specific sources to establish ranges by rank and discipline. Our analyses conclude with individual comparisons of current versus structure-defined pay, estimated costs to reach minimums and midpoints, and identification of compensation above range maximums to inform policy choices.
Staff Compensation
Non-faculty employees keep the campus running and shape the student experience. Compensation programs must adapt to evolving labor markets and pay-transparency statutes. We develop modern, steward-minded systems by mapping roles into job families and levels, creating consistent titles, pay bands, and career pathways, and aligning ranges to regional labor-market data and institutional resources. Our analyses identify instances of compression, inversion, and disparate impact so leaders can intervene before inequities widen.
Move Your Compensation Strategy Forward
Across leadership, faculty, and staff, transparent and market-informed pay practices signal institutional values. Our integrated approach clarifies pay philosophy, identifies valid benchmarks, tests internal equity, scans external opportunities, strengthens compliance, and considers affordability—guided by one principle: compensate people fairly, competitively, and sustainably in service of mission.
Contact us to discuss compensation strategies and structures designed to attract, reward, and retain mission-focused, high-performing executives, faculty, and staff.
Contact Us
David J. Bauer, Ph.D.
Director, Casagrande Institute for Higher Education Effectiveness
djbauer@viterbo.edu
608-796-3617