Lowest Paid College President Made $105,465

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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