At the meeting, the board reviewed new data showing that most members of the class of 2015 pursued further education or got jobs after finishing their degrees. | Getty Images State higher ed official on why women earn less than men: 'Maybe it's genetic'

TAMPA — A state higher education official said colleges should teach women how to negotiate better salaries, saying there may be a “genetic” explanation for why female graduates of the state's public universities make less money than their male peers.

Board member Ed Morton, who was appointed by Gov. Rick Scott, made the remark during the State University System's board of governors meeting on Tuesday when members were discussing ways to close the pay gap between men and women graduates of Florida schools.


“Something that we’re doing in Naples [with] some of our high school students, we’re actually talking about incorporating negotiating and negotiating skill into curriculum so that the women are given — maybe some of it is genetic, I don’t know, I’m not smart enough to know the difference — but I do know that negotiating skills can be something that can be honed, and they can improve,” said Morton, a retired investment manager who chairs the board’s strategic planning committee.

“Perhaps we can address that in all of our various curriculums through the introduction of negotiating skill, and maybe that would have a bearing on these things," he said.

Asked for a response, Scott's office sought to distance the governor from his appointee's comment.

"As a father of two daughters, the Governor absolutely does not agree with this statement," his spokeswoman, Lauren Schenone, said in an email to POLITICO Florida.

Joining Scott in criticizing Morton’s comments was Gwen Graham, who is running for the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

“When I sat at the negotiation table, nothing about my gender or genetics held me back,” Graham, an attorney, tweeted. “THIS is why we need more women in state government.”

At the meeting, the board reviewed new data showing that most members of the class of 2015 pursued further education or got jobs after finishing their degrees. The report, from system staff, pegged the median salary of graduates who were working full time one year after graduation at $39,100, with women and black graduates earning less than their male and white peers.

According to the system’s report, female graduates earned a median of $37,000, which was $5,500 less than what their male peers were earning, $42,500. African-American graduates had the lowest annual median wage, $35,600.

Female graduates accounted for 59 percent of the class of 2015 and 60 percent of the students who were working a year after graduation.

Research shows that women are less likely to engage in salary negotiations than men, but studies have found that haggling over wages hurts women job seekers more than men.

Board members also suggested the nature of women graduates’ degrees could be the culprit.

“Are women going into education more?” said the board’s vice chair, Norman Tripp. “Are those salaries naturally lower than in other areas? … I would just suspect that that might be part of the equation, but we can’t really tell.”

Supporting Tripp's argument, studies have shown that traditionally female jobs, like teaching, pay less than male-dominated jobs. More women entering male-heavy fields has helped to shrink the pay gap in recent decades. (For example, according to the report, engineering and computer science graduates in 2015 got the highest paying jobs, with median wages between $53,000 and $59,000.) However, women are paid lower salaries than men in nearly every occupation.

In Florida, full-time working women made about 87 percent as much money as their male counterparts in 2015, according to a study earlier this year from the American Association of University Women.

Christy England, the system’s associate vice chancellor for academic policy and research, who presented the report, said the information about graduates’ starting salaries could be useful to employers and job seekers. Hiring managers might discover they are struggling to find workers because they’re providing too little money. Recent graduates could combat low offers with data showing their peers are earning more.

Morton also guessed the disparity in starting wages would likely disappear over time, since Florida’s public universities are enrolling and graduating women at a higher rate than men.

“Some of it will probably be a little bit self-correcting, because we’re graduating many more women than we are men from university systems nationwide,” Morton said, adding, “that in and of itself is a challenge.”

Further, Tripp asked whether African American graduates’ salaries were lower because the system enrolled more black women than black men, so the women’s lower salaries could bring down the overall statistic for the racial demographic. England said she would need to analyze the data further to find an answer to his question.

Tripp said he was disturbed by the discrepancies.

“It bothers me, No. 1, that all our graduates are not reaching the median. That really is a bother,” Tripp said. “And second, that we’ve got this diversity between the male and the female, especially when we know we’re graduating more female than male students.”

UPDATED at 8 p.m. with statement from Gov. Rick Scott's spokesperson.