EDITORIAL – PHEAA awards unfair bonuses

While college students across the state start school, the Pennsylvania Higher Education… While college students across the state start school, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency gave away more than $500,000 in bonuses to its top executives last Wednesday.

A PHEAA spokesman supported the bonuses on the grounds that they were well-deserved rewards for the agency’s many financial achievements.

But this comes months after PHEAA was under harsh criticism for allowing its staff to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel spending, which included numerous golf trips and spa treatments, according to the Post-Gazette.

Many financial achievements? We’ll be the judges of that.

PHEAA’s executives already make above average salaries. There’s no question about that. In fact, the executive who received the highest bonus, Richard E. Willey, already had a yearly salary of $289,118. Willey was awarded $180,857 on top of that. Four other executives received bonuses of $113,514 each. All four already have annual salaries of more than $200,000.

This doesn’t exactly seem fair. For one thing, it’s safe to say that anyone in Pennsylvania can live comfortably on a yearly salary of $200,000. Secondly, while rich executives get richer, there are still many, many college students who are still in need of extra money to help with their education.

Perhaps PHEAA executives would be somewhat justified in getting these bonuses if they weren’t the ones rewarding themselves. Maybe students should have had a say in this. We are, after all, supposed to be benefiting from PHEAA’s financial services. If Pennsylvania’s many college students decided that they were getting enough aid as a result of PHEAA’s wonderful job in distributing the money, then maybe those executives would be deserving enough to help themselves to a hefty paycheck.

But state Sen. Sean Logan, vice chairman of the PHEAA board, said the bonuses were necessary. Logan told the Post-Gazette that the agency “need[s] to pay people so that we can compete in the marketplace. To run the business side like we do, you have to have the best people.”

However these people know what kind of salaries they are getting themselves into when they first enter into their positions. They may be earning less than those who work in the private sector, but that’s part of the job. Public servants should be committed to advancing the public welfare, as opposed to taking advantage of it.

PHEAA’s decision is garnering criticism by Gov. Ed Rendell, who has threatened to privatize the agency for “acting like a private agency,” according to the Post-Gazette.

But privatization is not the best solution to the problem. Privatizing will not necessarily help the many students who depend on PHEAA’s financial aid.

It would also be very difficult, as there are numerous legislative boundaries the governor would need to cross to do so. Rather, we think the whole system must be revamped. The system of administering loans should be altered so that there’s oversight to help decide whether or not top executives deserve such large bonuses. It’s simply not fair for the PHEAA board to decide something like that for themselves.

Those who work in the public sector should prove they are doing an exceptional job before collecting an exceptionally large bonus.