A committee of the state Board of Higher Education has voted to hire a consultant to take a look at how salaries paid to college and university presidents stack up with others of similar size and region-wide.
This survey does not include the Chancellor or members of the University System office.
A “request for proposals” will be issued.
"What that will allow is to have a substantive evaluation of the firms that apply, as opposed to simply taking lowest price," said University System legal counsel Eric Olson.
Board members Jeffry Volk and Nick Hacker will work on helping to draft the RFP. Volk had earlier pushed for such a survey, but at the time, the Board decided against it.
Volk said he’s concerned that the colleges be grouped appropriately, when looking at salaries.
"I want to make certain that the two research institutions (NDSU and UND) have separate study reports," Volk said. "They're different enough, so that we should be looking at them differently."
The issue will be considered by the full Board.
The results will not affect the hiring of the new president at the North Dakota State College of Science.