Yawn.
It’s a free market, and Susan Polgar is free to ask for whatever salary she thinks she can get. Couple things working here.
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Susan Polgar is a bit of a celebrity, so that’s working in her favor.
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Negotiating salaries is a back and forth thing. I would presume Susan is asking for the most she thinks she’s worth, and the counter offer will less. After some back an forth, eventually both parties will agree to some contract, or Susan will eventually move on and try to entice a different college to employ her.
without a doubt one of the funniest things I’ve read on here in a long time had me giggling like an idiot for 3 or 4 minutes.
Polgar in my opinion shouldn’t be given that kind of money. Chess in the u.s is just not popular enough. Also she doesn’t meet the right qualifications to make that kind of money .
For a school determined to put themselves on the map in intellectual circles and believing that a championship chess team is a good way to do that, they could reasonably decide that they can get enough value from the investment (in terms of coaches and additional scholarships).
Nobody has said what a chess coach actually DOES in order to earn a high 5- or a 6-figure salary. Anybody know?
Al Lawrence might be in the best position to definitively answer this question among current Forum participants. However, given that the coaches of two premier college chess programs in the country are GMs Polgar and Onischuk, my guess would be that they train their players.
Whether they, or other collegiate coaches in chess and other endeavors, “earn” their salaries is a subjective question best answered by the administrators of the schools in question. IMO, any employee is worth whatever the market is willing to pay. If top college chess coaches earn six-figure salaries, more power to them.
Regardless of what I think of Ms. Polgar, chess coaches making more money is good for all of us.
I agree. Webster might just figure out that their chess team actually does promote a positive image better than, say, spending a large sum on traditional advertising. When other colleges catch wind, an “arms race” will ensue. It’s like the NFL. When one team seems to find the secret formula, other teams try to copy it. We all know that chess is used in traditional advertising to promote positive stereotypes (and unfortunately some negative stereotypes, but the advertisers typically use the positive ones) of chess players. Positive associations with chess (academics, intelligence, concentration, etc.) are exactly the kinds of images colleges and universities – especially small local ones like Webster – use to promote themselves.
A Div. 1 football or basketball coach earns his seven-figure salary because he returns a proportional amount of revenue back to the school. Even if Polgar makes $250k/year, what could that money buy Webster on a national scale, using traditional marketing? Probably almost nothing.
Webster operates branch campuses in four countries in Europe, China and Thailand, as well as on armed forces bases across the United States.
Certainly in Europe and Asia, Susan Polgar is a well-known name they can promote to attract students, and perhaps use for appearances overseas as well as in the US. People in those countries would care less about Webster’s football or basketball coaches.