Median Pay of Public University Presidents Rose to $436,000 Last Year

By Jacques Steinberg

For those who may have wondered how the financial crunch at the nation’s public universities might be affecting the pay of the leaders of those institutions, The Chronicle of Higher Education provides some answers.

The publication looked at the compensation of 185 public university presidents and calculated their median pay at $436,111 during the academic year that ended in 2009. That’s an increase of 2.3 percent over 2008 – which, the Chronicle says, is the lowest such increase since at least 2001, when it began its survey.

The highest-paid public university president, according to the Chronicle: E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State University, with a compensation package valued at nearly $1.6 million last year.

For an article on The Times’s Web site about the survey, click here. To post a comment on the pay of public university leaders, use the comment box below.

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Tom January 18, 2010 · 12:24 am

And what do the football coaches at Florida, Ohio State, Texas etc make?

Andy January 18, 2010 · 12:27 am

The President of the United States has a $400,000 salary. Do these university presidents deserve to make more than that?

Victor January 18, 2010 · 12:32 am

The common wisdom is that high salaries and benefits are required to attract the ‘best and the brightest’ to jobs such as CEO of GM or President of some university.

Am I wrong in thinking that these same ‘best and brightest’ and their mentors were the ones that ran their companies and our economy into the ground.

In Southeast Asia, I can find within 2 hours 50 women who are qualified to run GM or a university.

Although, I am an old White Guy, I propose that we may not need the Old White Guy ‘best and the brightest’ to operate our companies and our economy.

We can easily outsource the job of CEO. It is even easier to outsource the job of Bungler.

tamarisk January 18, 2010 · 12:45 am

They’ve got a nice competition going with Wall Street in the “let them eat cake” department.

Quasimodo January 18, 2010 · 12:48 am

185 grossly overpaid public servants that need a reality check.

Higher education is a bubble and they’re taking advantage of it just like Wall Street did.

john fisher January 18, 2010 · 12:50 am

These are the same people who criticise Wall Street for being greedy. What hypocrites!!!

Doyle January 18, 2010 · 1:01 am

Wow!!!!!!!! College CEOs get the fast-food fried chicken, while the students subsist on biskits ‘n gravey – praise the Sailor Man…

jld January 18, 2010 · 1:19 am

I am sorry, but I will never ever disagree for an increment in salary for a teacher/professor or for that matter the president of a university. These individuals could be making a lot more outside of a public university system and they have chosen to lead America and hence our future by educating the next generation. I am not a teacher and have no vested interest in professors/teachers/administrators salaries, but I definitely believe that each and every one of them should get a pay raise tomorrow.

Hilary January 18, 2010 · 1:48 am

Ruling-class people make sure they get theirs.

J Kimball January 18, 2010 · 1:49 am

The University of Washington raised tuition by 16%. The president kept his $905,000 salary plus corporate board directorships worth another $350,000 per year. The state legislature is currently considering allowing each of the state universities to set its own tuition thus distancing themselves from the political fallout of further tuition increases. Shame on the president for taking so much while more and more students are being priced out of a public education.

Subodh Jain January 18, 2010 · 2:00 am

May be, after we are done with the bankers’ compensation hearings which just show hot air with no corrective results, we can show people’s anger about the University leaders envying the corporate CEO salary packages. They do need a reminder about tenure and numerous other benefits uniquely provided to them. Forget the nobility gestures of academia.

Jeff January 18, 2010 · 2:30 am

This STINKS! I know the leasership at Cal Berkeley has said some strange things regarding the recent cutbacks there – like they’ll just have to reach out to more foreign students and cut back on local student admissions.
Why does the institution even exist? You’d think educators would be more sensitive to the “irony” of giving themselves raises while they cut services to students. Maybe they’re just bankers with different portfolios. Are ALL our institutions corrupt?
Go JETS!

long-time observer, OK January 18, 2010 · 2:33 am

God bless the adjuncts, those teachers who’ve been kept part-time in ever-increasing numbers for a couple of decades now. Without benefits or raises for all this time, they are near desperation at this time. But even full-time faculty are at risk in this recession; it provides a reason and an excuse for cutting their pay and perhaps even their jobs.

Administrators, enabled often by political cronies, are prospering while students, teachers, and curricula suffer–a microcosm of the larger picture in America now. Burdens are pressed downward, and rewards are retained by those at the top. The accumulation of wealth and power by these relative few is imperiling all the institutions of the nation. I do not know how this can be changed. But it must be changed somehow.

Nana January 18, 2010 · 2:53 am

Somewhere in the last two decade or so, university presidents, who often have working with them a phalanx of vice presidents, advisors, and others that do the actual day-to-day work at universities, convinced university boards they were not actually just caretakers but more akin to CEOs of large corporations (like the big banks).

As CEOs, the thinking goes, the 150 – 250k that past university presidents earned previously, mostly resulting from a slight pay bump from when these individuals were professors, was just not adequate. They needed car allowances, allowances for wining and dining big donors, and of course salaries comparable to those of major corporations. So for these guys and gals, a median pay of $436,111 is nothing.

Hey, greed is now admired all around, so why not these leeches? What if kids can’t even pay to go to school? That is not their concern. It’s each person for themselves.

Joshua E. Barnes January 18, 2010 · 3:11 am

Our new president at the University of Hawaii, M.R.C Greenwood, makes $475,008. It’s nice to see Hawaii’s ahead of the curve – at least in one respect. Meanwhile, the faculty are getting a 6.667% pay cut.

T.L.Moran January 18, 2010 · 4:00 am

Well of course the people who run the universities are paying themselves millions – out of mainly tuition payments. Which means that students and their families are borrowing money from the banks for very high interest rates, all to pay luxury salaries to university presidents, who don’t stay on the average any longer than 2 years before “trading up” to the next big scam.

It’s the Wall St. of the ivory towers. No longer about education or raising better citizens, it’s now all about bringing in more sheep to fleece them. If people don’t want to be fleeced in colleges, they have two other options – become a criminal and be sent to a for-profit prison, or join the military and go fight Halliburton’s profitable wars.

Any way you go, the majority of ordinary people are simply now just another commodity (and an expendable one at that) to be moved around by the rich, in order to increase their profits. If Americans think they’re “better than” China’s factory workers, think again.

Soylent Green, anyone?

John C. January 18, 2010 · 4:04 am

What exactly do these guys do?

I was an undergraduate for four years, a graduate student for five years, a post doc for five years and a university professor for ten years. I never saw or met the university presidents where I was either a student or a faculty member. I rarely even heard of their activities unless they made some bone-headed mistake.

So I spent nearly 25 years in academia without ever meeting or knowing what is the function of a university president.

So I ask again, what exactly do these guys do?

Brian January 18, 2010 · 4:05 am

Colleges/universities in the US are businesses.

They outsource things that don’t help them retain their competitive advantage or cut too deeply into profit margins; hence, the proliferation of part-time/adjunct instructors.

Conversely, they funnel lots of investment into the circus components of NCAA sports, to attract–and then, subsequently, distract–students who are lured by the school’s brand appeal.

Presidents of colleges/universities are CEOs who get compensated according to how they manage these dynamics and complete their most important function: fundraising.

We’ve been sold on the myth that a college education is the only way to a meaningful life; the plutocracy that runs this nation ensures that this myth is communicated in the K-12 military-industrial complex, where young citizens-to-be learn to be obedient workers, to be mindless and good consumers, and to pledge to a flag representing a nation that cares nothing about them.

Of course, the plutocracy also expects college graduates to be saddled with debt upon graduation, so that they will be compliant workers and strapped of any autonomy to think about the broader structures that govern their lives. A distracted, debt-ridden populace causes few problems.

Circling the drain, we are . . .

Dick January 18, 2010 · 4:23 am

They are already overpaid and they do not have real couses in American history. They are selling the youth that what other countries have is better than what we have. Read the Constitution and practice what it says.

swp January 18, 2010 · 5:04 am

The corporate educator bubble too must pop.

maybe-baby January 18, 2010 · 6:21 am

These pay increases are another reminder of how colleges have gone corporate in their overall cost structures, building more and more on student debt.

There is a bubble waiting to burst, not unlike the housing bubble. The bursting will come as more and more students find themselves with no job but a lifetime of debt.

Albert C January 18, 2010 · 6:27 am

This is an utter disgrace, not merely because of how painfully ironic it is to see the heads of universities receive ever larger pay checks as everyone else in their institutions is asked to make sacrifices, but because it demonstrates the inability of trustees to effectively oversee the practices of university presidents. Given the state of the overall job market, i doubt that anyone can seriously substantiate the claim that increased compensation is needed to keep these “educators” from leaving their posts. I hope that this article might shame some to return a portion of their salaries, and to pledge that future raises will be in line with the average raises received by the faculty and staff who work for them

john mckendry January 18, 2010 · 6:58 am

At a time like this a pay increase on that level and considering the source of the money, is unconscionable. Most of them also receive free housing while in office and many other generous perks.

W. Chen January 18, 2010 · 6:58 am

It’s quite unfortunate that higher education has turned into a pro-profit business and the for-profit pay structure to go with it.

Diana January 18, 2010 · 7:13 am

While it is definitely true that students have been hit, let us also consider the larger cultural picture of the university itself.

There is an obscene disparity between the salary and benefits of the ‘leadership’ at the universities and the drudges who merely work there—not just faculty (who have accepted pay cuts or lost jobs), but in the rapid increase of “adjunct” faculty, who make up an ever larger proportion of teaching staff at our nations’ universities. I used to be an adjunct, but could not afford it. It’s not a liveable wage–you have no benefits, including sick days and health insurance, and you are paid what amounts to less than minimum wage (when you take into account grading and planning). So you have ‘leadership’ who is unconnected to the students and paid gigantic amounts and drudges who are directly responsible for our students’ education who are paid minimum wage. At a recent MLA meeting of university instructors and professionals in Philadelphia, one theme emerged in conversations over and over again: the horrible economic climate, how people were getting laid off left and right, how they had to work three or four jobs in order to make ends meet, if they were lucky, how whole departments were being shut down, and how difficult it was to get a ‘real’ tenure track job. Of course, this story is being repeated all over the country, in nearly all professions except Wall Street bankers.

The effect in the university are frightened, poorly supported adjuncts who fear to speak out or step ‘out of line’ in any way, or they will lose what little job they have. This is the climate our nation’s youngsters are being increasingly taught in, in most of our nation’s universities and community colleges. Meanwhile, we can rest easy that the president is getting his raise and living in his paid-for mansion.