College presidents should receive competitive pay for the work they do. But it’s hard to determine how much is too much — or, put another way, when a university’s trustees are going overboard in lavishing money and perks on the president. Well-established universities tend to justify raising the salaries of their chief executives based on their fat endowments and generous fund-raising numbers. Up-and-coming universities often reward their presidents for jumps in their annual rankings. But even less-respected institutions can justify paying through the teeth for a top manager based on their need for quick improvement.
Unfortunately, it all adds up to higher-than-inflation raises for private college and university heads, while students are getting buried under increasing debt. The link between the president’s compensation and tuition is tenuous at best, but in a time of great student anxiety over finances, colleges and universities must show restraint.
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It's important to drill down to see whether high compensation is really an annual salary. Often, a president makes only an average presidential salary because he/she defers some of his/her comp as a lump sum to be paid later. Then, the lump sum is paid and it appears that the person is making a ridiculously high salary. But the high salary is actually earned income from previous years. Some presidents make too much money. But given what they do for a living, the good ones tend to be a bargain. They work 24-7, raise millions or even billions of dollars, and have no lives. Their talents mean they could have done well in the private sector, where they'd be making the really obscene amounts that some corporate CEOs make.
Remember when Northeastern was a gritty streetcar commuter school? Now it's trying to be an Ivy, at least in its compensation for university president.
worse than wall st. greed run wild.