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While a 9% raise may be eye-popping to many people, even after getting one Luzerne County Community College President Thomas Leary remains the second-lowest paid president of Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges.
The salaries this year range from a low of $156,907 at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College in Johnstown to a high of $280,736 at Community College of Allegheny County based in Pittsburgh.
Both before and after the raise approved at Tuesday’s board of trustees meeting — Leary’s first pay increase in three years — his salary was lower than all others except the president at Pennsylvania Highlands. With one member absent, the trustees increased Leary’s salary by a bit more than $15,271, from $169,685 to $184,957.
The bump, while substantial, wasn’t quite enough to lift Leary up even one place on the list of community college presidents. The next two lowest are at Community College of Beaver County, $185,000,and Westmoreland County Community College, $187,272. The other 10 presidents are all paid more than $200,000.
Leary’s pay looks better if enrollment is added to the math, though it can be tricky to compare those numbers because community colleges serve a variety of nontraditional students, from those just taking a course for self-enrichment to others seeking a specific certification or an associate degree.
The federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) has uniform enrollment data for “unduplicated headcounts.” According to those numbers, LCCC has the fifth lowest enrollment — 7,656 — among the 14 colleges. The lowest is Community College of Beaver County at 3,248 while the highest is Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC), also called Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, at 26,634.
While pay-per-pupil does not take into account other factors about running a college — for example, along with the main campus in Nanticoke, LCCC has seven centers across four counties — such a comparison puts Leary’s pay near the middle of the 14 community colleges. His new salary is about $24 per student using the IPEDS data, sixth highest.
Perhaps predictably, the college with the most students, HACC, pays the least per pupil, $8.98. The college with the lowest enrollment, Community College of Beaver County, has the highest, pennies shy of $57.