Retirements, Rehirings Questioned

Some University of Missouri administrators who have retired early are not really leaving…and the state auditor wonders about the great deals they’re getting. Here’s the arrangement. Take early retirement and collect 65 percent of your present salary. Then the University hires you back for 74 percent of what your salary had been. The chancellor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis just can’t get along without three top adminsitrators–making as much as 120-thousand dollars a year. The president of the whole university system has approved the plan. State auditor Claire McCaskill does the math. An administrator making 120-thousand dollars a year before retirement now will pull down about 167-thousand dollars in salary and retirement benefits. She’s not aware of any other University administrators with similar deals. But she wants to look into the retirement packages university facuilty and administrators are getting–if the University coooperates, and there have been indications from the university that it considers some of those deals secret.