The raises several top administrators recently received surely could have come at a better time, but when President Peter Likins defended them earlier this week at a Faculty Senate meeting, he was correct in arguing that they were needed.

The raises, which were announced over the summer, average 6.9 percent, and went to a dozen of the UA's most senior officials, some of whom already made more than $150,000 per year.

By those numbers, the raises seem outrageous, especially considering that UA faculty are woefully underpaid and continue to leave the university for higher-paying jobs elsewhere. Add to that the state's budget crisis, which has caused job losses and class cancellations.

But the critics of the raises are failing to see the bigger picture. Without competent administrators, every faculty member could make hundreds of thousands of dollars and the university would be the functional equivalent of a ship sailing aimlessly through the night without a captain.

These administrators were underpaid, too. Granted, they were already making more than their faculty colleagues, but it's hard to object to administrators earning more money than the people who work for them.

Their salaries needed to be compared with those of their colleagues around the country, and more importantly, of those at ASU, the only university in Arizona comparable to the UA.

At the UA, administrative salaries rank below 90 percent of the national average compared to similar institutions; while at ASU, salaries of officials with comparable responsibilities rank above 110 percent.

In a world ruled by the market, that's a problem, especially when trying to run an elite public university. The UA needs to pay its administrators well, or it risks losing them.

Funds were available to solve this problem, and Likins correctly used those funds to do so.

Faculty salaries at the UA still lag far behind those at peer institutions around the country. That's a much more complex problem than the administrative salary gap, because it's a lot harder to find money to give raises to 12,000 faculty, staff and academic professionals than to 12 administrators.

Opinions are determined by the Wildcat opinions board and written by one of its members. They are Kristina Dunham, Brett Fera, Caitlin Hall, Daniel Scarpinato and Jeff Sklar.