Survey lists top earners among college presidents

While tuition costs keep on rising, so do the salaries of college presidents.

A survey of college presidential salaries revealed Monday that the compensation packages given the leaders of four private universities last year topped $800,000.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual salary report also said that the top officials at 12 public schools are scheduled to earn more than $500,000 in 2003-04.

With an annual package of salary and benefits totaling $891,400, Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., was the top earner among college presidents last year, the Chronicle said.

The Chronicle said that doesn’t include Jackson’s compensation for serving on eight corporate boards, which adds an additional $591,000 to her annual income.

Closely behind Jackson on the list of top earners among private school presidents were Gordon Gee, the president of Vanderbilt University in Nashville ($852,000), the University of Pennsylvania’s Judith Rodin ($845,474) and Arnold Levine of Rockefeller University ($844,600).

The Chronicle said the $677,500 that will be paid in salary and benefits in 2003-04 to the University of Michigan’s Mary Sue Coleman puts her atop the list of public institution leaders.

Coleman is followed on the public schools list by University of Delaware President David Roselle, who will earn $630,654 this academic year and Richard McCormick, who will receive $625,000 to head New Jersey’s Rutgers University.

During the 2001-02 fiscal year, the Chronicle said, the chief executives of 27 private schools received compensation in excess of $500,000.

Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway is the top-paid CEO for a state university in Kansas. He makes $272,711 this year.Hemenway’s salary is up 24 percent from last year, thanks mainly to a $1 million donation from Charley Oswald, a KU alumnus from Edina, Minn., who was chairman of National Computer Systems, now NCS Pearson. Hemenway will make about $50,000 a year from the account, in addition to his state-funded salary of $222,331.Oswald also donated $1 million each to supplement the salaries of the presidents of Wichita State University and Kansas State University.KSU President Jon Wefald now makes about $262,000 a year — including $212,967 in state money — and WSU President Donald Beggs receives about $236,000 a year, including $186,407 in state funds.

David Harpool, the president of Argosy University in Chicago, criticized college boards that approve exorbitant salaries for their presidents while saddling students with tuition increases topping 10 percent.

“We don’t apply any common sense business principles to these decisions,” said Harpool, the author of “Survivor College,” a book that criticizes nonessential spending on college campuses.

The Chronicle compiles its data on the salaries paid the presidents of private institutions by reviewing nonprofit tax forms filed last year by each school. The current salaries of state college and university presidents are determined by reviewing both nonprofit tax forms and the public budgets filed by each institution.