Apr 21, 2014 11:34 AM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

At face value, City University of New York's hiring of world-renowned economist, former Princeton professor, and current New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was a steal and a boon to the public university. Upon further examination -- especially in this Inside Higher Ed article by former CUNY Ph.D grad James Hoff -- the celebrity addition isn't all it seems.

For one, Krugman will instantly become the Graduate Center's (where he'll be working) highest paid employee. He'll make $225,000 per year, just $5,000 more than the next highest salaried professor, but $75,000 more than others. His slight outlier of a paycheck sounds worse, however, when compared to the light schedule he'll be expected to maintain. Krugman will essentially be allowed to explore his own projects his first year. By his second year and thereon after, he'll only have to teach half the course load of a typical distinguished professor at the Graduate Center, according to Inside Higher Ed.

"My biggest concern is time, not money - and your description of the time commitment, one seminar per year plus public events and commitments to LIS [Luxembourg Inequality Study] (which I would want to do in any case) sounds as if it's within the parameters I had in mind," Krugman wrote in his acceptance letter.

Such an arrangement might seem more acceptable if it weren't for Krugman's specialty, inequality economics, and the project he'll be joining at CUNY, the Luxembourg Inequality Study. Thus, in a way, Krugman is contributing to the issue his research is designed to expose and solve.

Hoff concedes that scholars should be supported in their research. Commenters of his article further defend the professor by comparing his $225,000 salary to college coaches, most of whom make at least a $1 million per year.

Yet, Hoff also noted that Krugman's net worth is around $2.5 million, strengthened by his enormously popular books. What, then, is his salary actually supporting?

In reply to comments comparing Krugman's salary to those of college coaches, others emphasized that college coach's life work wasn't based around inequality; thus, they're grand salaries are more justifiable.

Hoff summarized his opinion and proposed a tentative solution with his final paragraph.

"Such wasteful and ill-conceived competition is a clear abandonment of CUNY's founding mission to educate the children of the poor and working classes of New York City and represents a serious misapplication of priorities. At a time when tuition costs are skyrocketing and public higher education relies increasingly on underpaid adjuncts - teaching full course loads for near minimum wages without health insurance or job security - spending such huge amounts for celebrity appointments is not only fiscally unsound, but morally untenable." 

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