Concordia president’s base salary exceeds $500,000
A breakdown of Concordia University senior administration salaries in 2023-2024
In the 2023-2024 academic year, Concordia University President Graham Carr received a $33,352 salary increase, up 6.84 per cent from the year prior. Carr’s salary totalled $520,829 including other taxable amounts for the year.
Concordia’s financial statements and statements of salaries for the year ending on April 30, 2024 were completed in October and released on the Assemblée nationale du Québec’s website on Nov. 29.
The other highest-paid members of Concordia’s senior administration include VP of Services and Sustainability Michael Di Grappa, Provost and VP of Academic Anne Whitelaw and VP of Research and Graduate Studies Dominique Bérubé. They received salary increases of $10,133, $10,626 and $10,901 respectively.
Salary increases for university senior administration in Quebec must be made in accordance with the rules and regulations from the Quebec government, laid out in article 5.11 of the Règles budgétaires et calcul des subventions de fonctionnement aux universités du Québec.
According to Concordia spokesperson Julie Fortier, the salary increases for senior administration were equal or equivalent to those given to other “unions and associations” at the university.
She also claimed that the president and other senior administration members donated the amount of their salary increase for 2023-2024 to the university.
The increases come as Concordia is facing what it refers to as “extraordinarily challenging times” following the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ)’s tuition hikes for English-language universities.
Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA) academic coordinator Angelica Antonakopoulos said that the recent cuts have resulted in ASFA executive members being spread too thin as they attempt to mobilize against different austerity measures.
“We're sitting in these meetings with university administrators over and over and over and the response that we get almost ad nauseam is there's just not enough money,” Antonakopoulos said, adding that she finds it hypocritical for senior administration to raise their salaries as they cut and reduce student services.
“I'm very disappointed, evidently, but I'm also not surprised,” she said. “I kind of expected to see this coming.”
Antonakopoulos added that, even if administration members have given away the amount of their salary increase, she is nonetheless left wondering why they accepted the increase in the first place.
“I think this just underscores the fact that Concordia acts in bad faith financially,” said Antonakopoulos. “There have been calls for both divestment and anti-austerity measures yet the university can’t even manage financial austerity.”
In the budget updates for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, Concordia outlined that it implemented cuts of 7.8 per cent to reach its goal of ending the year with a $34.5 million deficit, down from the original projection of $78.9 million.
Cuts have included reducing the shuttle bus service, maintaining the hiring freeze implemented in the 2023-2024 school year, cutting courses with low enrolment, and the closing of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.
