Rose State College President earned $212,000 in Fiscal Year 2010

Rose State College President Terry D. Britton earned $212,000 in Fiscal Year 2010. He is among those state government employees working in Oklahoma’s Higher Education system paid more than the governor of Oklahoma, who earns $147,000 a year. 

Britton was inaugurated as the college’s president in 2007. He has led one of the few state institutions of higher education where spending has actually decreased in recent years.

At the campus in Midwest City, Leon D. Fisher, an assistant director and “overload professor” was paid a total of $101,250 a year. Vice President Keith J. Ogans was paid $101,025 in FY 2010.

Personnel costs at Rose State totaled $22,004,320 in FY 2010. The data is drawn from AccountAbilityOK.com. CapitolBeatOK is studying Higher Education personnel costs.

Oklahoma Watchdog reported in August that Rose State has implemented budget cuts two years in a row. Additionally, spending at the school has actually decreased three years in the past decade.

For Rose State, the average annual spending increase over the last 10 years has been only 2 percent.

As Peter J. Rudy, editor of Oklahoma Watchdog, reported, that hike is “less than the average national inflation rate during that period of 2.4%. Going a bit deeper in the numbers, every category of spending at Rose State declined from FY 2011 to FY 2012 and six of the seven categories declined from FY 2010 to FY2011.”

Rose State, a teaching and non-research institution, is still reliant on state appropriations for most of its income, but like other colleges is shifting toward other revenue sources when possible.

Rudy distilled the budget picture in these words: “In FY2003, Rose State’s budget included 62 percent state funds, 4 percent local funds and 31 percent tuition and fees.  By FY2012, the revenue sources had shifted to 58 percent from the state, 1 percent local funds and 41 percent tuition and fees.  Rose State did see a small increase in state funding for FY 2012 of $165,000. However, federal stimulus funds which provided $1.4-million to Rose State in FY2010 are no longer available.”