A Chronicle of Higher Education article serves as a reminder that football coaches aren’t the only college employees making seven-figure pay.
Some college presidents are in that league, too, including some at fairly small institutions.
The article ranks the top 10 college presidents according to pay as as percentage of campus budget. The article notes that presidential pay has grown much faster than faculty pay and it endeavors to identify “outliers,” those campuses where presidential pay constitutes a disproportionate amount of the budget.
According to this national survey by the Chronicle, Hendrix College’s Tim Cloyd was ranked No. 4 in 2009, with $1.056 million compensation, or 1.6 percent of the college’s $65.4 million budget. But the article notes:
The highest-ranking presidents on the pay list frequently earn their spots as a result of deferred-compensation payouts. Such was the case with J. Timothy Cloyd, whose 2009 compensation of $1.1-million at Hendrix College more than tripled his pay from the previous year. The spike is largely due to the fact that, in 2009, Mr. Cloyd collected eight years of contributions and earnings from a deferred-compensation plan valued at $738,388.
“We didn’t just decide to go pay him a million dollars for being a good president in 2009,” said David A. Knight, chair of the board of the college, which is located north of Little Rock, Ark.
It was nonetheless a good year. Only 36 college presidents made more than $1 million in 2009, the article said. Overall, though, the trend of a widening gap between administrators and faculty continued. One survey showed a 35 percent gain for presidents versus a 5 percent gain for faculty over a decade, the article said.