It seems like a lot of money. The president of Florida State University, Garnett Stokes, made $105,465 in the past year, as reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education. However, her compensation is tiny compared to what top university presidents made.

Rodney A. Erickson, president of Pennsylvania State University at University Park, had a total compensation of $1,494,603, which included base pay of $633,000, a bonus of $150,000, severance of $125,000 and deferred pay of $586,000. He also ran a scandal-plagued university, and one of the largest in the country. R. Bowen Loftin, made $1.13 million, which put him in second place among university presidents. He served as chief of Texas A&M at College Station. And that was for only part of a year.

The secret of university president pay does not lie completely with the fame of a school, nor its ranking among U.S. higher institutions based on the academic achievement of its students. Ranu Khator, the president of the University of Houston made $850,000 in the last year measured, and Parker T. Harker, the head of the University of Delaware, made $800,000. The University of Delaware only ranks 76th in the U.S. News & World Report rating of national universities. It has fewer than 18,000 students. Harker must have one of the best pay-to-university quality ratings in the country. Harker has held his job for eight years, which has to count for something.

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At the other end of the spectrum is Florida State University. The institution ranks 95th among national universities in the U.S. News & World Report poll, and it has an enrollment of 32,000 students. Stokes has been president for only a year, and only as interim president, but she still makes just a tiny sum compared to the field in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Methodology:

As of June 8, 2015, The Chronicle’s executive-compensation package has been updated with 2014 fiscal-year data on public-college presidents.

This update provides data on 238 chief executives at 220 public universities and systems in the United States. The median salary for presidents who served a full year is $428,250. Two presidents earned more than $1 million.

The most recent data on private-college presidents is from 2012, and includes information on 537 chief executives from 497 private nonprofit colleges. That year 36 presidents earned at least $1 million.

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