Highest Paid College Presidents at America's Public Universities

The former chancellor of the State University System of Florida served as president of FIU, a public research university, from August 2009 until January 2022. The 73-year-old political scientist who specializes in Latin America resigned following allegations he sought out companionship from a female university employee in her 20s.

Susan Cole became president of the second-largest university in New Jersey in September 1998. Cole has three degrees in English and American literature: a B.A. from Barnard College, the Manhattan-based women’s liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Brandeis University. Cole is the lowest paid of the four women university presidents on this list.

F. King Alexander’s brief tenure as president of Oregon State University ended in March 2021, when the university’s board of trustees unanimously accepted his resignation and put him on administrative leave. The move came after a report emerged about the mishandling of sexual misconduct allegations while Alexander was president of Louisiana State University. Oregon State paid Alexander his full $630,000 base annual salary plus $40,000 for relocation as part of his resignation agreement.

The former chancellor of the City University of New York system took a position in September 2018 leading the UT system, one of the largest public university systems in the country with more than 240,000 students. Early in his career, Milliken, who has a law background, spent time in Washington D.C. as the legislative assistant to the late Nebraska Republican Rep. Virginia D. Smith.

A Yale Law School graduate, Schill served as the president of the University of Oregon from 2015 until he was hired to head Northwestern University, a position he is scheduled to begin in the fall. Schill was selected for the new post after Morton Schapiro announced he would conclude his tenure in August 2022, and after his would-be successor, Rebecca Blank, announced she would step aside following a cancer diagnosis.

A graduate of biomedical sciences from Princeton, Mark Schlissel became president of UMich in 2014 after serving as provost at Brown University. The university’s board of regents unanimously agreed in February of this year to fire him with cause following an investigation into a relationship with a subordinate. According to emails the university posted on its website, Schlissel sent “dozens” of uninvited suggestive emails and texts to a female employee.

After serving in the state Senate as a Republican, Thrasher became president of Florida State University in November 2014. The decorated Vietnam War veteran earned a law degree with honors from FSU’s College of Law. Thrasher resigned in September without controversy to “focus on my family and pursue other interests.”

The former Indiana governor and pharmaceutical executive who briefly considered a run for U.S. president became instead the president of Purdue University in January 2013. Mitchell Daniels is a longtime Republican who supports school vouchers, and once as governor explored banning the works of leftist historian Howard Zinn from state public universities. Daniels announced he would step down by the end of the year.

Brooks Keel, who holds a doctorate in reproductive endocrinology from the Medical College of Georgia, took the helm at Augusta University in 2015 after serving five years at Georgia Southern University. He also served as vice-chancellor of research and economic development at Louisiana State University.

Cuba-born, Miami-raised Ana Mari Cauce became the University of Washington’s first permanent female president in 2015 after gaining tenure at the school in 1990 and serving as provost from 2012. She is also the first UW president with a Hispanic background and the first openly gay head of the 158-year-old institution. Mari Cauce is one of four women on this list.

A practicing pediatric gastroenterologist, Jay Perman became chancellor of the University System of Maryland system in 2020 after serving as president of University of Maryland, Baltimore, since 2010. Among other focuses, Perman oversaw the development of community health care engagement programs for families and children in West Baltimore.

Neeli Bendapudi is one of four women on this list. Like Renu Khator, president of the University of Houston, Bendapudi was born in India and later earned a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Kansas. Bendapudi served as the head of the University of Louisville until December 2021, and started a new job as president of Penn State in May.

Walter Edward “Ted” Carter Jr. is the highest-ranking former military service member on this list, serving as a fighter pilot and then a vice admiral of the U.S. Navy until he was hired to lead Nebraska’s university system in 2020. A former superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, Carter was the uncontested finalist selected by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents.

Tedd Mitchell, a medical doctor, became chancellor of the Texas Tech University System in 2018. The system enrolls more than 63,000 students and operates 25 academic locations, 19 in Texas and two internationally.

The former vice provost of Columbia University has a doctoral degree in Public Administration and early in his career was a technology assessment advisor to the U.S. Congress. He became ASU president in 2002. Michael Crow is known to have introduced a more top-down, corporate CEO-style of academic management, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Samuel Stanley is a Harvard-educated medical doctor with an undergraduate degree in biological sciences from the College of the University of Chicago. He became MSU president in August 2019, replacing Lou Anna Simon, who was forced from office for her alleged disregard of sexual assault accusations against Larry Nasser, the now-incarcerated former USA Gymnastics doctor. Stanley came to MSU after serving as president of Stony Brook University since 2009.

Eric Barron holds a B.A. in geology from Florida State University and a master’s and doctoral degree in oceanography from the University of Miami. He served as FSU president from 2010 until he became Penn State’s president in 2014. Barron has previously served as dean of Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Kent Fuchs came to head the University of Florida in 2015 after serving as Cornell University’s provost since 2009. The Duke University undergraduate alum has a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois and a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Under his leadership, the University of Florida barred three of its professors from testifying on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Florida’s new voting rights laws as racially discriminatory.

After serving for five years as president of West Virginia University, James Clements assumed the president’s office at Clemson University in 2013. He holds advanced degrees in computer science from Johns Hopkins University and operations analysis from the University of Baltimore. He’s credited with leading efforts to raise $1.2 billion in private funds for Clemson.

Jeffrey Gold stepped down from his position as chancellor of UNO, Nebraska’s public urban metropolitan university, in June 2021. He currently serves as chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, a position he held since 2014. (He served concurrently at UNO and UNMC from 2017 to 2021.) Gold earned his doctorate in medicine from Weill Cornell Medical College.

The UT Board of Regents appointed Jay Hartzell president of UT Austin in September 2020 after he served as dean of the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin for four years. Hartzell earned a doctorate in finance from UT Austin, and prior to returning to the university as a faculty member in 2001, he taught at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Renu Khator is the highest paid of the four women on this list. Khator is the first Indian immigrant to lead a comprehensive research university in the United States and the first woman to serve as a chancellor of a Texas higher education system. Holding a doctorate in political science from Purdue University, Khator became president of the University of Houston in 2008 and served as provost and senior vice president of the University of South Florida.

Michael Good served as interim president of the University of Utah for eight months in 2021 after the school’s president Ruth Watkins resigned for a role at education nonprofit Strada Impact. The University of Michigan alum and anesthesiologist became CEO of the University of Utah Health in 2018 after serving as dean of the University of Florida College of Medicine.

Prior to assuming the helm of the University of Colorado in 2019, Mark Kennedy was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota who unsuccessfully ran for a Senate seat in 2006, losing to Democrat Amy Klobuchar. The former Pillsbury Company executive served as president of the University of North Dakota prior to his role at UC.

The chancellor of North Carolina State University since 2010 is the highest paid leader of a U.S. public university. An undergraduate alum from the University of Arkansas, Randolph Woodson holds a master’s degree in horticulture and a Ph.D. in horticulture and plant physiology from Cornell University. He’s a specialist in the reproductive processes in agricultural crops. Prior to his role at NCSU, Woodson served as provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at Purdue University.