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UMich Now Has Over 500 Jobs Dedicated To DEI, Payroll Exceeds $30 Million

Authored by Jennifer Karbany via The College Fix,

The University of Michigan continues to exponentially grow the number
of staffers dedicated to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion,
with at least 241 paid employees now focused on DEI and payroll costs
exceeding $30 million annually, according to an analysis conducted for
The College Fix.

The payroll costs are $23.24 million for salaries and $7.44 million
for benefits, or $30.68 million, an amount that would cover in-state
tuition and fees for 1,781 undergraduate students.

Thirteen DEI staff members earn more than $200,000 and 66 earn more
than $100,000 when factoring in benefits.

In addition, 76 faculty or staff members work part-time as “DEI Unit
Leads” advancing diversity efforts in one of UM’s 51 schools,
colleges, and units, bringing UM’s core DEI headcount to 317, said
economist Mark Perry, who conducted the analysis.

The number of positions at Michigan’s flagship university advancing
DEI exceeds more than 500 when including those who work full-time or
part-time on DEI and factoring in open and unfilled positions, as well
as employees who serve as “DEI Unit Leads” and others who serve on
dozens of DEI committees, Perry said.

    “That brings the total number of UM employees who advance DEI on
either a paid or unpaid basis to well more than 500 and possibly as
high as 600,” said Perry, a paid consultant for The Fix who used
public salary and website data for the analysis.

University of Michigan disputes the findings, arguing in a statement
to The College Fix they are “flawed and misleading” since they include
employees whose primary duties are not solely DEI-related.

    “Diversity, equity and inclusion are core values at the University
of Michigan. As such, there is not a specific budget set aside for
diversity outreach and recruitment,” said Colleen Mastony, university
spokesperson, in an email Monday to The College Fix.

    “Most employees working on DEI are not solely dedicated to DEI
efforts but do so in addition to their other roles and
responsibilities.”

    “…The university’s DEI efforts are appropriate to the size, scope,
and complexity of our university – spanning the university, including
51 units over our three campuses, our academic medical center, and our
over 100,000 students and employees. Although some work is done
centrally, much of it is done at the unit and department level,”
Mastony said.

Today, the public university employs at least 241 paid staff members
whose main duties are to provide DEI programming and services as a
primary job responsibility, according to Perry.

    This list of DEI employees at the University of Michigan compiled
by @Mark_J_Perry for @CollegeFix is longer than a @BillAckman tweet:
https://t.co/l8Etmh3DMC pic.twitter.com/gjNdg6P2hx
    — Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) January 9, 2024

As part of UM’s ambitious five-year Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
(DEI) 2.0 Plan, the university’s 19 academic schools and colleges and
its 32 non-academic units must now also implement DEI plans.
Non-academic units include the school’s three libraries, art museum,
botanical gardens, IT department, athletics, development, audit
services and more.

    “UM’s five-year diversity central plans are reminiscent of the
Soviet Union’s and Communist China’s five-year central plans to
achieve ‘Ideal Communist Societies’ which are examples of top-down
oppressive bureaucratic blueprints to socially engineer outcomes
decided by the top leadership of the dictatorial regimes,” Perry said.

    “UM has become a DEI ideological complex with a university
attached,” he said, referring to Warren Buffett’s comment calling GM
is a health and benefits company with an auto company attached.

The $30.68 million cost to fund the 241 DEI employees does not include
indirect costs, such as computers, phones, printers, travel expenses,
conference expenses and overtime.

Perry said the full number of DEI positions likely exceeds 500 when
taking into account: full-time or part-time DEI staffers at 241;
employees who serve as DEI Unit Leads at 76; DEI positions currently
open or unassigned, roughly 130; and employees serving on dozens of
DEI committees in various departments, schools, colleges, and units at
150 or more.

DEI staff is well compensated with salaries as high as $402,800 for
the university’s chief diversity administrator, Tabbye Chavous
Sellers. She is paid almost two times more than the average full
professor, about 2.5 times more than the governor, and about three
times more than the average assistant or associate professor.

Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s salary is $159,300, and the average
salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at UM are
$129,500, $148,300, and $206,500, respectively.

The average DEI salary at UM is $96,400; factoring in fringe benefits,
144 DEI employees at UM receive a total compensation of more than
$100,000.

The 2023-24 totals are a huge increase from last year’s figures, which
came in at 142 DEI employees at a payroll cost of $18 million
annually, a spike that can in part be traced to UM’s recent and
sweeping five-year Diversity 2.0 Plan, which “outlines UM’s diverse,
inclusive future” over the next five years from 2023 to 2028.

UM’s new DEI 2.0 plan comes on the heels of its first $85 million
5-year DEI 1.0 Plan from 2016 to 2021. According to the January 2023
column “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of DEI 1.0” in the Michigan
Review, that plan failed miserably.

The independent student newspaper reported that campus climate surveys
conducted in 2016 and 2021 found that UM students became less happy
since the beginning of DEI 1.0 on nearly every metric.

The survey results show “DEI 1.0 has been a failure, and it is not
because of a lack of resources. If the largest number of diversicrats
in the country cannot improve life on campus, there is something wrong
at the heart of the effort,” argued then-student Charles Hilu.

Hilu, a former contributor to The College Fix, said last week the new
figures are even more disheartening.

“Given the program’s track record, it is unfortunate that the DEI
bureaucracy is ballooning even further,” he said via email.

“As I had pointed out before, nearly every measure of student
well-being declined after DEI 1.0, and students became less likely to
interact with their peers who had different backgrounds,” he said.

“The first effort certainly did not have a lack of resources. I hope
that the University of Michigan has truly assessed why DEI 1.0 yielded
the poor results it did, given the amount of money and staff they are
now throwing at their diversity programs.”