"Just hand over your membership dues and CEU fees and no one gets hurt!"
"Gee, Thelma, if I knew that robbing school SLPs was going to be this much fun, I would have become an ASHA employee years ago!"
ASHA employs 306 employees and spends $23,832,092 on “salaries, other compensations, employee benefits.” That works out to an average of $77,628 per employee. But wait. The highest compensated employees make several times that amount.
ASHA executive director Arlene Pietranton’s total compensation in 2008 was $456,241. That includes $294,558 base compensation, $139,389 deferred compensation, and $22,294 in nontaxable benefits.
Charles M. Cochran’s total compensation was $395,901.
Vicki Deal-Williams’ total compensation was $217,775.
Lemmietta Mcnelly: $216,621.
Margaret Rogers: $203,503.
Vic S. Gladstone: $330,408.
James G. Potter $199,664.
Paula Starr: $290,974.
Stan Dublinske: $202,324.
Michael Guerrieri: $187,157.
I would be the last one to complain about the high salaries of ASHA’s officers and directors if I thought that ASHA was doing a good job of promoting the professional interests of SLPs and audiologists. But I don’t think that ASHA is doing a good job of promoting our professional interests; in fact, I think ASHA is working against our best interests. Rather than consistently acting as our ally, ASHA often acts like our adversary. ASHA has become the problem, not the solution. Here’s just one example: no one - and I mean no one - charges more for SLP CEUs than ASHA. If you were to get all of your CEUs from ASHA at the typical cost that ASHA charges members, it would cost over $1,000 every three years to maintain your CCCs. That means that if you plan on working for thirty years, it will cost you more than $10,000 over the span of your career simply to maintain your CCCs. Add the cost of your membership dues to that and you end up with a grand total of over $18,000 of your hard-earned cash flying out of your pockets and into the golden coffers of ASHA (and that doesn't include your state licensure renewal fees). That’s a ridiculous amount of money to spend for a cheesy cardboard membership card and access to a website that you probably only click on once or twice a year.
Posts
