Executive compensation hasn’t just been going up on Wall Street. The salaries of private university presidents also have leaped this decade, during which the heads of some higher education institutions first eclipsed the $1 million mark. Only five years ago there were no college leaders making a seven-figure salary, but today there are 23.

 

Leading the way is Shirley Ann Jackson, former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, whose pay package totaled $1.6 million in fiscal year 2008. Other presidents at the top of the pay scale are David Sargent of Suffolk University in Boston ($1.5 million) and Steadman Upham of the University of Tulsa ($1.5 million).

 

Overall, the median pay for presidents of the 419 private colleges and universities surveyed by The Chronicle of Higher Education was $358,746—a 14% increase from what it was five years ago.

 

Jeffrey Selingo, editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, told The New York Times that “presidential salaries have gone up faster than inflation, and faster than tuition, which rankles some people on campus.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

23 Private College Presidents Made More Than $1 Million (by Tamar Lewin, New York Times)

Executives' Compensation at Private Institutions (Chronicle of Higher Education)