<p>The president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Shirley Ann Jackson, was the nation’s highest-paid president of a private college in 2012, with total compensation of $7,143,312 — almost twice as much as the next most highly compensated president — according to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual pay survey.</p>
<p>Below Dr. Jackson on the list were John L. Lahey of Quinnipiac University ($3,759,076), Lee Bollinger of Columbia University ($3,389,917), Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania ($2,473,952) and Charles R. Middleton of Roosevelt University ($1,762,956).</p>
<p>It’s really weird to me. First of all, Quinni-what? What the heck is that? And Roosevelt University in Chicago - which is essentially a commuter type of school - over NU and U of Chicago?</p>
<p>I totally get seven figure salaries for those who lead research universities – especially when you are running not only an undergraduate institution, but you’re also running a medical school / hospital center, law school, and business school. That’s equivalent to being a CEO of a major company. </p>
<p>A few privates do seem to be for-profit rackets. They’re non-profit, but extra profit gets skimmed off by administrators instead of plowed in to the endowment.</p>
<p>RPI’s a pretty small school as well, if I recall. Is there a balloon payment in there?</p>
<p>Of interest to me is the comparison of the median compensation of all private college presidents to mean compensation (the median is $412,000) of the top 50 New England boarding school principals:</p>
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<p>I know it is not apples-to-apples (ALL private colleges vs. TOP 50 NE boarding schools), but interesting parity nonetheless. Educating our children draws some well-compensated professionals!</p>
<p>Boarding schools don’t receive federal student grants and federally subsidized student loans, so it’s their business what they want to pay their headmasters.</p>
<p>These numbers are tricky - you need to look at the components. For many of the top paid the amount which is just pay and bonus is a lot less than the total. They are using fully loaded pay numbers (the number the school would put on their accounts, not the amount you would report to the IRS.) They include health benefits, housing, travel, entertainment, food, etc. </p>
<p>Also, those who head religious schools have their income listed as $0 - yet you know the school is paying for their housing, health benefits, etc and that amount is not disclosed.</p>
<p>I still think the scope of what one runs is very relevant to whether someone is “overpaid” or not. The managerial skills involved with running an LAC and the managerial skills involved with running a research university with a hospital, law school, business school on top of the undergrad are very different. </p>
<p>You are right, but in a different way perhaps. Tricky people finding tricky to pay high level executives in round-robin of insiders. Executive compensation is defined by “outside” consultants that are retained for the sole purpose of explaining continuous escalation through “comparison.” </p>
<p>The deferred compensation and “retaining bonuses” should be abolished, as their sole purpose is to defer the real cost and let a different administration deal with the issues and pretend they cannot do anything about it. Those people earn huge salaries coupled with tons of benefits, and it would be better to pay them their correct salaries at once and have the practices open to review and criticism as well as showing the “fully loaded” compensation. Tell the world what Dr X cost the school! </p>
<p>The tricks are what yielded HS super earning several hundreds thousand dollars and college presidents millions. And then they wonder why education is fast becoming unaffordable. Perhaps they should have a simple list based as a percentage of what we pay our POTUS. </p>
<p>@GMTplus7, it is certainly a free market for salaries. I was simply comparing compensation for running a school with and average of 460 students with that for running a much more complex and larger enterprise.</p>
<p>I am amused by your mentioning the Federal $$. I was on a thread where people couldn’t seem to get it through my head that the Federal grants and loans accrue to the benefit of the STUDENT and have NO IMPACT on the business of running or funding the school. I wish you would have joined me on that thread- it was like yelling (or something…) into the wind, and I could have used an ally.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, you’d have a hard time to make such a statement universal. In fact, there are countless schools that solely survive by targeting the availabiliy of federal funds and loans and mislead the students about the value of their education. While it appears that the such funds might benefit the students, scratching the surface about how they ultimately benefit the school might reveal quite a different picture. </p>
<p>The availability of federal funds and loans have a HUGE impact on running and funding most schools, unless it is one that follows the model of Hillsdale. </p>
<p>@xiggi: Many/most of those are for-profit diploma mills. BTW, that racket is more profitable at the graduate level. With caps on how much in Federal direct loans that dependents can get each year for undergrad education (and it’s not a big amount), few schools with high prices are surviving on federal aid.</p>
<p>I do not disagree. The fact that diploma mills might survive mostly on the student loans racket does not invalidate the notion that all oher schools are impacted by the presence of such financing. I was addressing a comment about having NO impact on the school, and that is an obvious fallacy. Any reduction in education finance would create a tsunami of school failures with results ranging from beneficial to devastating. </p>
<p>@xiggi, I totally agree with you. Others were trying to dissuade me. In fact, there are other ways the school/government relationship is impacted through establishing federal financial aid, even if the amounts are not so consequential to the school operating budget. Just the establishment of the relationship changes how schools operate. For example, the government has leverage to insist that a majority of students are domestic.</p>
<p>I wish you would have been on the previous thread. I was standing alone with a very small (2 digit, I think) number after my “Posts:” indicator, and some posters going to the extent of posting “ItsJustSchool thinks…” followed by some unflattering strawman non sequitur.</p>
<p>The opposing claim in that thread was that that federal aid to students is strictly between the federal government and the student, and thus has no impact to the school. This is simply not true.</p>
<p>BTW, I am seeing in the news some movement towards the government starting to audit “low six year graduation rate” schools to try to close down some of the rackets you mention.</p>
<p>IMO, private colleges can pay anything the want to their Presidents and I don’t see why any of them should feel any shame in excepting those packages. </p>
<p>I have a different opinion on salaries and deferred comp packages for Presidents of public colleges and universities - though I do believe they should be very well compensated, also. </p>
<p>I’m in xiggi’s transparency camp on this. If this were a corporate situation, the proxy would have picked up the existence of the accruing retention bonus. I’m not sure if that is the case for universities. </p>
<p>I don’t really care about the level of compensation, since it means she earned about 590K annually more than was apparent. Maybe she truly was worth it.</p>
<p>I’ll reserve judgement about whether retention arrangements of this type make any sense. If it keeps the school from firing someone who should be fired, it would be better to just pay them year by year and keep your options open to make changes, the way that performance-based organizations do (athletic teams, fast food restaurants, and most other private enterprise). </p>
<p>@dadx, My impression is that it is a 10-year agreement executed after she had been there 5 years. She started in 1999, and she is eligible to earn this bonus when she completes 10 years (until 2014) of service. They are contemplating a new similar agreement. These are Golden Handcuffs, and do not (apparently) bind the school; rather they are to encourage the President to stay. One issue, I think, is fiduciary use of non-profit funds for executive compensation.</p>
<p>"…They include health benefits… " - LOL. We have plenty of CC threads bemoaning the high cost of health benefits. Bit it’s a nit on a 7 million dollar salary. </p>