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Understanding how to negotiate your salary is a skill that you’ll hone over your career. Normally, many new employees want to negotiate for higher salaries...but for some, that's not always the case: Incoming University of Texas at Austin President Gregory Fenves turned down a $1 million salary because he thought it was too much. Say what?
According to the Austin American-Statesman, Fenves said (in emails obtained by the newspaper) that a $1 million salary was "too high for a public university" and that it might prompt "widespread negative attention from student and faculty given the difficult budgetary constraints of the past five years." Instead, he requested a salary of $750,000 and requested that an annual bonus be capped at 10 percent of his base salary. "It's very, very unusual, especially with what's going on today with presidential salaries. They keep going up and up and up," said James Finkelstein, a public policy professor at George Mason University who studies executive compensation in higher education. (For more on this story, check out Inside Higher Ed.)
What do you think of Fenves' decision to request a lower salary? Should more college presidents follow in his footsteps? Share your thoughts in the comments section.