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Facing a crisis: due to high salaries that business professors are commanding, SDSU may have tough time hiring teachers, dean explains.

Article Excerpt
Ask most people why they live in San Diego and they'll say the weather and California's lifestyle.

Norman Sondak, 73, a professor emeritus at San Diego State University and former chairman of the business college's Information and Decision Systems Department, is no different. Because of growing demand for high-tech acumen and teaching skills, other universities have tried to lure him away with higher salaries over the years, but he never entertained their offers.

After moving here with his wife and the youngest of their three children from Massachusetts, where he was a department head at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in 1978, he bought a home and put down roots. He was locked into the "system," so he says.

"I came here from the East and didn't want to go back," he said. "I had offers of significantly more money from a prestigious Southern school and another in New England, but I declined because we like it here.

"We were in the system, as they say, and if you're in, it's not bad. It's just that entering the system now is expensive," said Sondak, father of San Diego Business Journal Deputy Editor Brad Sondak.

For an "affordable" California State University school, midway between the community college and University of California systems, SDSU's College of Business Administration has a good reputation. Its undergraduate international business program was ranked seventh in the country on a list of "America's Best Colleges 2005" by US. News & World Report.

Sondak's profile reflects what Gail Naughton, the dean of SDSU's business college, described as the stable corps of tenured professors who are...

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