Big Money Men on Campuses

Mothers and fathers, don't just dream about your children being doctors (well, doctors might be passe, given malpractice coverage), lawyers or hedge fund managers: Have them set their sights on being the president of a major university. amNew York has a feature on salaries of NYC college/university presidents. The presidents are mostly charged with fund-raising, hence needing a real "performer" that gets a sweet compensation package, but the money they make can be pretty sick (note: private institutions pay more, natch).

amNew York has a breakdown of salaries, but here's a sampling of a few (note that expenses include things like housing, transportation, travel):

NYU's John Sexton
Pay: $765,559; Benefits: $33, 430; Expense account: $89,131
Total pay package: $888,120

Columbia's Lee Bollinger
Pay: $664,180; Benefits: $21,750; Expense Account: $93,743
Total pay package: $779,673

Brooklyn College's Christoph Kimmich
Pay: $198,392; Benefits: housing in state owned residence

Pace University's David Caputo
president since 2000
Pay: $594,877; Benefits: $77,362; Expense account: $0
Total pay package: $672,239

Cooper Union's Dr. Roger Campbell, Jr.
Pay: $291,650; Benefits: $20,399; Expense account: $98,897
Total pay package: $312,049

New School's Bob Kerrey
Pay: $440,000; Benefits $95,750; Expense account: $6,700
Total pay package: $542,450

Yeah, we can see why it might be hard to take NYU President Sexton seriously when he speaks about striking graduate students. On the other hand, these schools can be billion-dollar operations, and the presidents aren't getting stock perks (that we know of!), so maybe their pay is somewhat explainable. What do you think?

Photograph of NYU classroom from Jake Dobkin

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By Jen Chung in News on June 20, 2006 10:52 AM

Comments [rss]

smitty

I made less than 30k my first job out of NYU (2004). I should have skipped college and gone into construction!

shw

john sexton is awesome

and the plasma screens were a donation.

and yea, its a good idea to buy more buildings before prices go up too much

and the number of students has been capped

like i said, john is awesome

take a class from him

Fordham Grad

Universities as a whole - heck, EVERY institution/corporation - are wasteful of their resources. Their main purpose, in every instance I believe, is self preservation. Education is always secondary to campaigns pledging to "build for the future" or some other malarky. Really, they're all just stockpiling resources just in case. Of what? I don't know.

Rachel

Not to spoil the pot, but John Sexton is awesome.

Sarah

That's an NYU classroom? 4 years there and I never saw anything like that. Hm. Must be the law school.

Anyway, many of us choose private over state schools because of the programs and faculty. Should I pay more to study with a better department? Of course. Should I pay $30,000 a year? Probably not.

NYU always seemed like a wasteful university to me--hundreds of plasma screen TV's all over campus which are used to display announcments...just send us an email for goodness sake. And they keep buying up more space for classrooms and dorms--perhaps instead they should just stop increasing the overall number of students?

lola

$30k for a college graduate?, why even go to college?

brian

paying $150k is an injustice?...you do have the option to go to a state school and pay a fraction of what a private institution would cost

Jen

I was discussing this with Jake, and he made a good point that the real injustice is asking kids to pay $150K in tuition, when many of their salaries will be around $30K right out of school.

Max

ouf, daa. *vomits on keyboard* As an employee of one of the aforementioned academic institutions, i'm not surprised. And the salary cap in academic admin (for your "normal" administrators) is sooooo low.

Kojak

a ^

Kojak

Pace University's David Caputo

president since 2000

Pay: $594,877; Benefits: $77,362; Expense account: $0

Total pay package: $672,239

What sickens me about this is that Pace University wants to up their tuition from 12k to almost $15,000 a term starting Fall 06, almost putting it even with NYU. Note this is not including housing.

PACE IS BROKE, Yet the staff gets Ivy League Pay for heading 2nd rate school.