CORNELL ON TOP AMONG IVIES (finally)

Colleges & Universities A-Z Cornell University
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<p>To Cornell,</p>

<p>Salary info on Ivy League presidents</p>

<p>By The Associated Press Fri Feb 9, 4:08 PM ET</p>

<p>Presidents of Ivy League universities, their dates of appointment and total compensation for 2004-2005, the most recent year for which data are publicly available.
ADVERTISEMENT</p>

<p>__</p>

<p>BROWN UNIVERSITY</p>

<p>President: Ruth Simmons</p>

<p>Appointed: 2001</p>

<p>2004-2005 compensation: $684,709</p>

<hr>

<p>COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY</p>

<p>President: Lee Bolinger</p>

<p>Appointed: 2002</p>

<p>2004-2005 compensation: $685,930</p>

<hr>

<p>CORNELL UNIVERSITY</p>

<p>President: David Skorton</p>

<p>Appointed: 2006</p>

<p>2004-2005 compensation: Previous President Jeffrey Lehman earned $1,004,034</p>

<hr>

<p>DARTMOUTH COLLEGE</p>

<p>President: James Wright</p>

<p>Appointed: 1998</p>

<p>2004-2005 compensation: $479,233</p>

<hr>

<p>HARVARD UNIVERSITY</p>

<p>President: Derek Bok (interim)</p>

<p>2004-2005 compensation: Former President Lawrence Summers earned $595,871</p>

<hr>

<p>PRINCETON UNIVERSITY:</p>

<p>President: Shirley Tilghman</p>

<p>Appointed: 2001</p>

<p>2004-2005 compensation: $595,982</p>

<hr>

<p>UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA</p>

<p>President: Amy Gutmann</p>

<p>Appointed: 2004</p>

<p>2004-2005 compensation: $767,030</p>

<hr>

<p>YALE UNIVERSITY</p>

<p>President: Richard Levin</p>

<p>Appointed: 1993</p>

<p>2004-2005 compensation: $778,935</p>

<hr>

<p>Source: University Web sites, The Chronicle of Higher Education.</p>

<p>-with love</p>

<p>-the better ivies</p>

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<p>wow.... now isent this gonna draw lots of ainti-cornell flamers. u just put a bloody piece of meat out in front for the sharks to get, im thinking... the salaries of presidents of a university is rather arbitary and doesnt nessessarily mean anything</p>

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<p>most of that was simply benefits after Lehman was "asked" to resign (or fired, which is a bit more accurate). It was just compensation to keep him quiet, his previous year pay was far less.</p>

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<p>gomestar is correct that the amount to Lehman reflected way more than his yearly salary. It included a host of severance benefits. So it isn't comparable to the figures shown for the other university presidents.</p>

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<p>Dude...salaries of the presidents don't mean anything.</p>

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<p>^^^ Very true. I have no idea who thinks that how much the president is payed matters.</p>

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<p>The current president's salary is around $675,000, which is lower than many of the other schools but right in the range of Ivy president salaries.</p>

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<p>i HOPE they'd have lower salaries.... that way maybe our tuition will be lower.
i can't belive you think this is a good thing, a million dollar a year is hardly justified for the amount of actual work they do</p>

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<p>I dont those guys dont deserve most of the money they are getting. It is no like they are performing the job that no one can not do. $1,000,000 .... common, that is ridiculous.......</p>

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<p>Well, if you figure it on a cost per student basis, perhaps Skorton's pay is in line.</p>

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<p>Umm....yay?!?</p>

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<p>exactly what i was going to say, their salary should be directly proportional to the number of students they have (since all ivy tuition is somewhat along the same lines), and since cornell has the most people, it only make sense that their president has the highest salary.
im not hating on cornell btw, just saying what i thought. and not liking the fact that they're making soooo much money while tuition is still going up every year (or almost every year)</p>

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<p>actually, being the president of an ultra-elite institution is an extremely difficult job. I read an interesting article sometime last year about it ... I'm not sure I'd ever be up to that type of challenge, despite the pay. </p>

<p>And when you think about it, $700,000 isn't much to pay for somebody who is the anchor of the university, especially when the university is racking in over $1,000,000,000 a year in donations (on a campaign started by our very president)</p>

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<p>extremely difficult, but not 1 million dollars extremely difficult</p>

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<p>if the president screws up, he'll lose his job -- and possibly numerous faculty members, board members, the student body is at risk, applications comming into the school could fumble, alumni donations would plummet causing the endowment to suffer and possibly hurting available financial aid, and the university would have to deal with stunted growth for about a year to find a new president and then they would have to fix all of the errors ASAP.<br>
Hardly a $62,000 job. </p>

<p>Though the job is very difficult, they're not paying presidents $700,000 because of the level of difficulty. They're paid that much due to the sheer amount of responsibility that the individual has to take upon. It's an insurance policy in essence.</p>

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<p>they deserve it..</p>

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<p>gomestar, define what kind of 'screw up' would result in such a catastrophy?
and i doubt you wouldnt be fired from ANY OTHER job if you made the same degree of mistake.</p>

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<p>"define what kind of 'screw up' would result in such a catastrophy?"
I am not a president, so I am not familiar with typical "worst case" situations. But, perhaps if a president fails to raise any significant funding over a prolonged period of time - this can really hurt the university and its reputation, and the president would be toast after long. We've all seen big companies crash, the same can happen to a university like Cornell.</p>

<p>" i doubt you wouldnt be fired from ANY OTHER job if you made the same degree of mistake."
anybody would be fired, of course. But, as you should agree, some jobs are a bit more high risk than others. As one rather famous quote from a GE plant in the 80's on why managers and executives get paid so much more for doing seemingly less work: "if you screw up, you'll lose your job. If i screw up, 3,000 people will lose their jobs." Which one do you think requires some more responsibility? </p>

<p>I'm sure you would hate to see a paper next year that says "17,650 students apply to Cornell this year, down significantly from the past few years, the search continues for professors as the faculty dwindles due to competition from Cornell's peer schools, and the endowment remains stagnant as Harvard's increases 28%."</p>

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<p>the president is not ALONE responsible for all expenditure of funds, i hope you know that.</p>

<p>again, what manager's 'screw up' would suddenly make all 3000 people lose their jobs? </p>

<p>sure they carry more burdens, but if they screw up, then they screwed up, and gets fired. a higher salary doesnt keep them from screwing up. </p>

<p>whats more, if a president screws up, he lives the rest of his life normally (with a million dollars a year, i doubt you'd have to work more than 5 or 10 years). if a coal miner screws up, he dies, and since we're talking worst case scenerio, then so does the rest of his team. that is not catastrophic? why are miners not paid more money? no, their managers get more.
so what does money do? the increased sum of money is meant as motivation to prevent them from "screwing up"?</p>

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<p>"the president is not ALONE responsible for all expenditure of funds, i hope you know that."
certainly not alone, but undenyably a major factor, perhaps the most important person involved in the process. </p>

<p>"a higher salary doesnt keep them from screwing up. "
you have alot to learn about the work environment. People will always make mistakes, but very high pay is certainly going to make somebody thing twice about making certain decisions that could effect the business in any way.</p>

<p>"if a president screws up, he lives the rest of his life normally"
yeah, or in prison as we've seen as of late. But, I guess with your logic that must be normal. Lets say he doesn't go to prison and say he does live 'normally' - the stock holders have lost all of the money they've invested in the company, and hudreds if not thousands of people are left without jobs and possibly without any severence packages to support their families and their futures. But, I guess if this doesn't have the slightest effect on you or your conscience, life will be pretty normal after all and my argument is down the drain. Then again, not all 'screw ups' will be this big, though they will most likely have the same effect, just on a smaller scale (case in point the Discovery Chanel as of late - read up upon it if you need to).</p>

<p>"if a coal miner screws up, he dies, and since we're talking worst case scenerio, then so does the rest of his team. that is not catastrophic? why are miners not paid more money? no, their managers get more."
I'm glad you've brought this up after I did a nice case study on coal mining not long ago. Most of the accidents in coal mines are not because an actual miner messed something up ... rather, poor safety protocals on behalf of the managers tend to be the largest issues regarding mine safety. The miners are mostly just responsible for doing their job - setting up the work sites and complying with OCEA and Federal standards is up to the managers. This generally takes quite a bit of responsibility as you know many lives depend on it. Is it always done to plan? No, it doesn't as we have seen with numerous large corporations in the past ... the difference being the result for mining is usually severe physical injuries so it's much more likely to make public news. A miner certainly can screw something up and people are hurt as a result. Does this happen often? No, thankfully, at least not as of recent (lets forget about the 1920's for now). An interesting argument that I read in the case was this - miners don't have to get paid alot to follow safety guidelines ... the risk of killing a co-worker is usually impetus to be extremely careful on the job. </p>

<p>Back to the presiden't pay, I can always just go to the argument that it's on par with the industry standard for presidents at ivy league schools. The numbers are pretty easy to interpret here.</p>