New Illinois Law Dean Requests Lower Pay

North Building of the University of Illinois College of Law

New University of Illinois Law Dean Requests Smaller Salary

 
As a statement on the runaway costs of attending law school, the incoming dean at the University of Illinois has chosen to take a pay cut at his new job. The new dean, Vikram Amar, says the pay cut is intended to shed light on what he believes as unreasonable costs for legal education.
“I told the provost early in our negotiations, ‘I make a good living at Davis. I need to make sure that I can pay my bills and the like.’ I don’t want to be a martyr, but I do think that the cost of legal education is a problem. I want to not contribute to the problem but rather begin to be part of the solution,” incoming UI law dean Vikram Amar told local Champaign-Urbana newspaper The News-Gazette.
While the pay cut is a touching show of solidarity towards students burdened with expensive law school education costs, Amar will still earn $324,900 annually, according to  The News-Gazette. The impressive figure is only slightly less than the $326,651 paycheck that the former UI law dean earned in 2013-14. It should be noted, however, that Amar has also declined a summer stipend (typically worth around $25,000), college officials told The News-Gazette.
Amar has written, taught and consulted in the fields of constitutional law, civil procedure and remedies. Starting in 1993, he served as a faculty member at UC-Davis. Five years later, he left to teach at UC Hastings for a decade. In 2007, he returned to UC-Davis, eventually being named as the next dean of the University of Illinois College of Law earlier this month.
While Amar still earns a salary higher than what most law deans make, he has identified an increasingly alarming trend in the costs of higher education in law. The University of Illinois, for example, is among the most expensive public law schools in the country. Currently at UI, total cost estimates clock in at $59,993 for Illinois residents and $67,743 for out-of-state students.
Source: Business Insider
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