6 ms·

Many private college presidents make $1 million

32 points by codegeek 13y ago

stevesearer 13y ago
Having gone to a private university with a highly paid (probably not 1M+) president, this is unsurprising to me. University presidents and the vision + fundraising prowess they bring to these schools can be pretty amazing. The school I attended was quite small with a mediocre array of programs and athletics. After 10+ years of the current president's shepherding, the school has undergone a transformation in student body size, program depth, and athletic accomplishment. All of these things mean more students in the future and an increased alumni pride - both of which mean more revenue to the school.
- thenmar 13y ago
  Yeah I think you're right. If anything it's the endless list of deans making $200k that we should be looking at, not the president.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 13y ago
U of C has an endowment of about $6.6 billion. Much of the job of the President of the University is to raise money for this fund. In any other context, $3.4 million/year for the chief fundraiser of a $6.6 billion fund would not cause anyone to bat an eyelash. Since 2000, despite two major economic downturns, U of C's endowment almost doubled, from $3.8 billion. About half that time was during Zimmer's tenure, and his fundraising activity undoubtedly had a major impact on that growth, especially given the impact of the downturns on investment returns.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  Agreed. A relative of mine has done college presidencies and her main job was to visit wealthy alums and sweet talk them into more donations. There are actually a lot of small, financially distressed colleges out there that pay their presidents about $120K or $160K, and hope they'll raise more money for the school not to mention attract in more students. The picture is rather grim these days for many small liberal arts schools. I hope they can pull through but it's like everything else--the small newspapers, the mom-and-pop stores, the small publishers and broadcasters are all being squeezed out by mega chains and online options.
- stingrae 13y ago
  This is exactly the point. University presidents are not hired primarily to manage an institutions education, but to fundraise. I recall a specific example in which the regents of the University of Virginia attempted to remove their president for not meeting a $3B fundraising goal. A chief fundraiser asked to bring in that much money should be compensated like those in industry dealing with similar amounts. Otherwise how will systems attract the best for the position.
jerf 13y ago
The median base salary for private was $301,299, the median base salary for public was $441,392. The slant the headline suggests is not well supported by the actual numbers, carefully hidden in the last paragraph. (The article itself is useful enough, I'm specifically criticizing what I feel is the slant they are trying to convey.)
- codegeek 13y ago
  The article does mention "Presidents at 42 private colleges scaled the $1 million annual mark in total pay and benefits in 2011". So while the base compensation was 400K, the total comp. touched a million for most of them.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I imagine public universities can't pay out the same kind of bonuses and the like, because of state rules, and have higher base salaries to compensate.
  - jerf 13y ago
    My point is that it's not as if private colleges are paying out in the millions while our frugal and humble public presidents get by on a paltry $50,000/year, pouring everything into educating the student. Fiddly little differences like this are no advantage to either side, irrelevant fractions of a percent of either budget. The whole thing about salaries seems like an attempt to distract from the administrative bloat problem, which public universities have in spades. The problem in either school isn't whether one employee out of thousands is being paid a million dollars, the problem is that universities are paying a staggering number of "administrators" $50-150K/year, when after decades of computerization any sane person would expect the administrative load of universities over the past several decades to be rapidly trending down, not up. I haven't heard anyone criticize private universities for this; I infer with weak confidence from this and the general politicization of private university that do not have this problem.
jmduke 13y ago
This isn't an issue, despite the article's implication otherwise. Being a president of a college isn't exactly a low-impact position: in addition to being a public emissary to the college, they send the majority of their time on the road, raising money for their endowment. Colleges who offer poor compensation for their presidents will generally receive a commensurate return on their investment (though I'd love to see a normalized graph of presidential salary to yearly fundraising, as a point of comparison.) (If you're interested in examining bloat and waste in universities, I recommend faculty-to-administrator ratio as a jumping-off point.)
- rayiner 13y ago
  Right. As the alum, I don't want my university to skimp on its President or on fundraising. It's a small part of the budget but a major impact on how much money goes into the school. I'm far more interested in controlling bottom line costs (administrators, faculty salaries, construction). It doesn't seem to me that the salaries of university presidents (or the financial managers of the university endowments) are responsible for growing tuition. I feel like having an administrator for every imaginable function and the demolition and replacement of perfectly serviceable academic buildings might be more of a factor...
  - jmduke 13y ago
    Construction (at least with public institutions) tends to come from different a completely separate place than general operating budgets. I'd argue that this is an issue in of itself (that it's so comparatively easy to spend money in such a manner), but I think from the college's perspective its generally rational, as they aren't allowed the luxury of weighing rebuilding a nine-year-old science lab (as is occurring at my alma mater) against smarter ways to spend that money.
- grecy 13y ago
  With millions of your countrymen without basic health care, shelter and food, you think it's not a problem that someone makes $1 million a year? Wow.
objclxt 13y ago
...this doesn't bother me nearly as much as some people. Certainly not while college football coaches earn far more. The top ten highest paid football coaches are all taking home $3.7 million+, and that's at state universities[1]. Personally, I would value the university president more than the football coach. [1]:http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1840036-usa-today-reveals-college-football-head-coaches-salaries-for-every-fbs-school http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1840036-usa-today-reveals...
- hnja 13y ago
  Universities make a boat load of money on football. It's important to have a great coach.
  - chaz 13y ago
    Indeed. http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/08/31/the-economics-of-college-football-a-look-at-the-top-25-teams-revenues-and-expenses/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/08/31/the-econ...
cantbecool 13y ago
This is sensationalism. There are many college athletic coaches in state schools being compensated over a million a year. Look at the recent contract extension of Nick Saban at the University of Alabama.
- steve-howard 13y ago
  And the justification for that is the same; these people bring in tons of money. First link I could find to support that: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/07/03/report-finds-alumni-giving-among-other-areas-correlated-football-success http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/07/03/report-finds-a...
- cafard 13y ago
  A cousin who is a professor once mentioned that the basketball coach was by far the highest-paid employee at her university. I understood the faculty's resentment, but said that the coach was also about the easiest one to fire based on results.
notdrunkatall 13y ago
Supply and demand, supply and demand, supply and demand. I wish more people understood this most basic law of economics. If the supply of people who are both willing and able to handle the position of university President is low, wages (which are the price of labor) will rise, thus enticing those who are able but not willing to meet the demand. The prevailing average wage rate for university Presidents is simply a reflection of the price point at which the supply and demand curves of capable labor for this position meet. Conversely, if there was an abundance of people who could fulfill this position, wages would decrease commensurately. There is nothing wrong with someone making $1 million, or $10 million, or $100 million for performing a function, provided that wage is being offered to everyone who can perform that function indiscriminately. Of course, a system made up of imperfect agents will not function in a theoretically perfect fashion, but this is more or less how things work. I'm sure that being the President of a university is not without its myriad challenges, and it is unlikely that the average Joe off of the street could perform this function well. Thus, wages for university Presidents are going to be higher than the average Joe's wages. The solution for the average Joe is not to attempt to bring down the wages of the university President, but to aspire to become capable of performing the function of the university President himself. Simplistic? Perhaps, but sometimes it's advantageous to think of things in simplistic terms. No one escapes the pot when everyone is being pulled back down.
- salient 13y ago
  If the government wasn't paying for tuitions like they are now, these prices formed by "supply and demand" would be much lower.
  - notdrunkatall 13y ago
    I generally agree with your implied point: that government subsidization of education leads to price inflation in that sector, but these are private schools, where government subsidies do not (to my knowledge) apply.
    - bskap 13y ago
deadmike 13y ago
Somewhere, Shirley Jackson chuckles...
saryant 13y ago
The president at my university retired taking home $2.2 million his last year in service, second-highest in the nation [1]. As an alum, I'm really not that bothered because he raised >$250 million during his last three years in office. He gets a cut of that. [1] http://www.texastribune.org/2010/11/15/texas-college-presidents-made-over-1-million-in-08/ http://www.texastribune.org/2010/11/15/texas-college-preside...
skloubkov 13y ago
Reminds me of this: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about... College presidents act as a face of an institution, paying someone extra 100,000 could mean bringing in millions extra in donations/tuitions/fees etc. Big money attracts talent.
callmeed 13y ago
Not surprised. Also, why single out private presidents? FYI most California Community College presidents (and there are over 100 of them) make $200-300K per year. The UC system president gets a $570K salary, a $10K/month housing stipend, and $9k/year vehicle stipend [1]. [1] http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/16/local/la-me-ln-uc-rental-20130916 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/16/local/la-me-ln-uc-re...

32 points by codegeek 13y ago

Having gone to a private university with a highly paid (probably not 1M+) president, this is unsurprising to me. University presidents and the vision + fundraising prowess they bring to these schools can be pretty amazing. The school I attended was quite small with a mediocre array of programs and athletics. After 10+ years of the current president's shepherding, the school has undergone a transformation in student body size, program depth, and athletic accomplishment. All of these things mean more students in the future and an increased alumni pride - both of which mean more revenue to the school.

thenmar 13y ago
Yeah I think you're right. If anything it's the endless list of deans making $200k that we should be looking at, not the president.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 13y ago

U of C has an endowment of about $6.6 billion. Much of the job of the President of the University is to raise money for this fund. In any other context, $3.4 million/year for the chief fundraiser of a $6.6 billion fund would not cause anyone to bat an eyelash. Since 2000, despite two major economic downturns, U of C's endowment almost doubled, from $3.8 billion. About half that time was during Zimmer's tenure, and his fundraising activity undoubtedly had a major impact on that growth, especially given the impact of the downturns on investment returns.

blisterpeanuts 13y ago
Agreed. A relative of mine has done college presidencies and her main job was to visit wealthy alums and sweet talk them into more donations. There are actually a lot of small, financially distressed colleges out there that pay their presidents about $120K or $160K, and hope they'll raise more money for the school not to mention attract in more students. The picture is rather grim these days for many small liberal arts schools. I hope they can pull through but it's like everything else--the small newspapers, the mom-and-pop stores, the small publishers and broadcasters are all being squeezed out by mega chains and online options.
stingrae 13y ago
This is exactly the point. University presidents are not hired primarily to manage an institutions education, but to fundraise. I recall a specific example in which the regents of the University of Virginia attempted to remove their president for not meeting a $3B fundraising goal. A chief fundraiser asked to bring in that much money should be compensated like those in industry dealing with similar amounts. Otherwise how will systems attract the best for the position.

jerf 13y ago

The median base salary for private was $301,299, the median base salary for public was $441,392. The slant the headline suggests is not well supported by the actual numbers, carefully hidden in the last paragraph. (The article itself is useful enough, I'm specifically criticizing what I feel is the slant they are trying to convey.)

codegeek 13y ago
The article does mention "Presidents at 42 private colleges scaled the $1 million annual mark in total pay and benefits in 2011". So while the base compensation was 400K, the total comp. touched a million for most of them.
rayiner 13y ago
I imagine public universities can't pay out the same kind of bonuses and the like, because of state rules, and have higher base salaries to compensate.
- jerf 13y ago
  My point is that it's not as if private colleges are paying out in the millions while our frugal and humble public presidents get by on a paltry $50,000/year, pouring everything into educating the student. Fiddly little differences like this are no advantage to either side, irrelevant fractions of a percent of either budget. The whole thing about salaries seems like an attempt to distract from the administrative bloat problem, which public universities have in spades. The problem in either school isn't whether one employee out of thousands is being paid a million dollars, the problem is that universities are paying a staggering number of "administrators" $50-150K/year, when after decades of computerization any sane person would expect the administrative load of universities over the past several decades to be rapidly trending down, not up. I haven't heard anyone criticize private universities for this; I infer with weak confidence from this and the general politicization of private university that do not have this problem.

jmduke 13y ago

This isn't an issue, despite the article's implication otherwise. Being a president of a college isn't exactly a low-impact position: in addition to being a public emissary to the college, they send the majority of their time on the road, raising money for their endowment. Colleges who offer poor compensation for their presidents will generally receive a commensurate return on their investment (though I'd love to see a normalized graph of presidential salary to yearly fundraising, as a point of comparison.) (If you're interested in examining bloat and waste in universities, I recommend faculty-to-administrator ratio as a jumping-off point.)

rayiner 13y ago
Right. As the alum, I don't want my university to skimp on its President or on fundraising. It's a small part of the budget but a major impact on how much money goes into the school. I'm far more interested in controlling bottom line costs (administrators, faculty salaries, construction). It doesn't seem to me that the salaries of university presidents (or the financial managers of the university endowments) are responsible for growing tuition. I feel like having an administrator for every imaginable function and the demolition and replacement of perfectly serviceable academic buildings might be more of a factor...
- jmduke 13y ago
  Construction (at least with public institutions) tends to come from different a completely separate place than general operating budgets. I'd argue that this is an issue in of itself (that it's so comparatively easy to spend money in such a manner), but I think from the college's perspective its generally rational, as they aren't allowed the luxury of weighing rebuilding a nine-year-old science lab (as is occurring at my alma mater) against smarter ways to spend that money.
grecy 13y ago
With millions of your countrymen without basic health care, shelter and food, you think it's not a problem that someone makes $1 million a year? Wow.

objclxt 13y ago

...this doesn't bother me nearly as much as some people. Certainly not while college football coaches earn far more. The top ten highest paid football coaches are all taking home $3.7 million+, and that's at state universities[1]. Personally, I would value the university president more than the football coach. [1]:http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1840036-usa-today-reveals-college-football-head-coaches-salaries-for-every-fbs-school http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1840036-usa-today-reveals...

hnja 13y ago
Universities make a boat load of money on football. It's important to have a great coach.
- chaz 13y ago
  Indeed. http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/08/31/the-economics-of-college-football-a-look-at-the-top-25-teams-revenues-and-expenses/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/08/31/the-econ...

cantbecool 13y ago

This is sensationalism. There are many college athletic coaches in state schools being compensated over a million a year. Look at the recent contract extension of Nick Saban at the University of Alabama.

steve-howard 13y ago
And the justification for that is the same; these people bring in tons of money. First link I could find to support that: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/07/03/report-finds-alumni-giving-among-other-areas-correlated-football-success http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/07/03/report-finds-a...
cafard 13y ago
A cousin who is a professor once mentioned that the basketball coach was by far the highest-paid employee at her university. I understood the faculty's resentment, but said that the coach was also about the easiest one to fire based on results.

notdrunkatall 13y ago

Supply and demand, supply and demand, supply and demand. I wish more people understood this most basic law of economics. If the supply of people who are both willing and able to handle the position of university President is low, wages (which are the price of labor) will rise, thus enticing those who are able but not willing to meet the demand. The prevailing average wage rate for university Presidents is simply a reflection of the price point at which the supply and demand curves of capable labor for this position meet. Conversely, if there was an abundance of people who could fulfill this position, wages would decrease commensurately. There is nothing wrong with someone making $1 million, or $10 million, or $100 million for performing a function, provided that wage is being offered to everyone who can perform that function indiscriminately. Of course, a system made up of imperfect agents will not function in a theoretically perfect fashion, but this is more or less how things work. I'm sure that being the President of a university is not without its myriad challenges, and it is unlikely that the average Joe off of the street could perform this function well. Thus, wages for university Presidents are going to be higher than the average Joe's wages. The solution for the average Joe is not to attempt to bring down the wages of the university President, but to aspire to become capable of performing the function of the university President himself. Simplistic? Perhaps, but sometimes it's advantageous to think of things in simplistic terms. No one escapes the pot when everyone is being pulled back down.

salient 13y ago
If the government wasn't paying for tuitions like they are now, these prices formed by "supply and demand" would be much lower.
- notdrunkatall 13y ago
  I generally agree with your implied point: that government subsidization of education leads to price inflation in that sector, but these are private schools, where government subsidies do not (to my knowledge) apply.
  - bskap 13y ago

deadmike 13y ago

Somewhere, Shirley Jackson chuckles...

saryant 13y ago

The president at my university retired taking home $2.2 million his last year in service, second-highest in the nation [1]. As an alum, I'm really not that bothered because he raised >$250 million during his last three years in office. He gets a cut of that. [1] http://www.texastribune.org/2010/11/15/texas-college-presidents-made-over-1-million-in-08/ http://www.texastribune.org/2010/11/15/texas-college-preside...

skloubkov 13y ago

Reminds me of this: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about... College presidents act as a face of an institution, paying someone extra 100,000 could mean bringing in millions extra in donations/tuitions/fees etc. Big money attracts talent.

callmeed 13y ago

Not surprised. Also, why single out private presidents? FYI most California Community College presidents (and there are over 100 of them) make $200-300K per year. The UC system president gets a $570K salary, a $10K/month housing stipend, and $9k/year vehicle stipend [1]. [1] http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/16/local/la-me-ln-uc-rental-20130916 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/16/local/la-me-ln-uc-re...