Report: SCAD president has ‘salary and lifestyle unheard of in higher education’

A nearby school, the Savannah College of Art and Design, was the subject of scrutiny in a story published earlier this week by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Examining real estate records, court cases and tax filings, the paper’s investigation found that SCAD gives the school’s president Paula Wallace “a salary and a lifestyle unheard of in higher education” and questioned if it was perhaps at the expense of students being “sold a dream.”

Wallace earned $19.9 million in salary and compensation from 2011 and 2015. In that same time period, Harvard University paid its president less than one-third as much. In 2014, her pay was $9.6 million — more than any other president of a nonprofit or public university in the United States, the newspaper reported.

SCAD operates a campus in the Provence region of southern France and Wallace has access to a residence there.

Nearly 13,000 students attend SCAD, according to its website. Annual undergraduate tuition, not including housing and other fees, is $36,630.

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 9:18 AM with the headline "Report: SCAD president has ‘salary and lifestyle unheard of in higher education’."