Yale University made a special $8.5 million payment to former president Richard C. Levin, an unprecedented lump-sum payout highlighting the increasingly lucrative compensation for leaders at the nation’s top universities. WSJ 5-20-15
Liz Warren was making about $450,000 as a professor at Harvard.
But the winner is Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a reported total compensation package of over $7,000,000; the highest in the Nation. Oh, and that is not including what she earns as compensation for serving on the boards of directors of several major corporations.
Tuition at RPI is $48,100 and if you are a part-time graduate student the fee is $2,000 per credit.
But Ms Jackson is not alone. According to the New York Times:
Most of Dr. Jackson’s compensation, however, came from a $5.9 million retention incentive set aside over the last 10 years, said Arthur Gajarsa, chairman of the Rensselaer board of trustees. Dr. Jackson, a theoretical physicist and former chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who has headed Rensselaer since 1999, received a base salary of $945,000.
“The deferred compensation was provided so that we would be able to keep the president involved,” Mr. Gajarsa said. “It vested only after 10 years, so if she’d left, she would have lost it. She’s worth what we paid, because she has done the job magnificently, and taken the university to a different level.”
Indeed, he said, the board has awarded her a second 10-year deferred compensation package, of about the same size, to retain her for the next decade.
Below Dr. Jackson on the list were John L. Lahey of Quinnipiac University ($3,759,076), Lee Bollinger of Columbia University ($3,389,917), Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania ($2,473,952) and Charles R. Middleton of Roosevelt University ($1,762,956).
According to The Chronicle’s survey of nearly 500 private colleges and universities, 36 of the presidents earned $1 million or more in 2012, and 162 were paid more than $500,000.
The median pay for a private-college president was just under $400,000, the survey found.
The academic elites are among the most vocal liberals generally supporting the inequality theory and bashing corporations and big business, championing raising the minimum wage and decrying the level of student loans … go figure‼️
But there is more. Many of these individuals receive significant additional income serving on various corporate boards. In this case compensation is a secondary issue. Look below at the boards on which Shirley Jackson serves or served. While Ms Jackson is an exceptionally qualified person, ask yourself how any individual can run a major university, a full-time job by any standard, and at the same time devote the time necessary to exercise the governance oversight required of a major corporation let alone several corporations simultaneously.
Do you have any doubt about the interrelationship between all the moving parts of our society or the hypocrisy of many of our most outspoken politicians❓❓
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Sometimes a short phrase does accurately sum up an era. Our age: crony capitalism.
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I believe the particular point of this post was that the rising tuition rates and the resulting need for excessive student loans could be due in part of the excessive compensation given college presidents; that and the hypocrisy of academic leaders pushing for a higher minimum wage and income equality.
I feel that you can cut & paste the same post as an example that the way out of poverty is education and having ambition. I am not sure how Dr. Jackson serves on so many boards and runs a university and survived the politics of Washington, DC but there are a few freaky people in the world with type ‘A’ personalities and because they work hard at getting ahead without expecting handouts are very well compensated. Somehow I believed that she looked for opportunities, took chances and has done well verses rioting in the street, blaming government for all the burned out businesses and the lack of jobs for the unskilled who are too high to go to school.
I also realize that there are working poor families out there and they do need help, not handouts. “Income equality” just shifts the pay scales and will make more of middle income workers low wage earners. Quality of life, opportunities, and ambition will not change, just cost more.
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My point on Ms Jackson is both her compensation level in light of all we hear from the far left, but more important the idea that one person no matter how accomplished they are can do all those jobs and do them as they are required to be done, especially the fiduciary responsibilities of a Board member. Ms Jackson has earned her status, she is well qualified for any position she holds, but her gender, her race and her academic background make her especially desirable as a public board member, but can any one person do all that? I don’t believe so. And yet the left bashes the irresponsibility of corporations and calls for more oversight and regulation.
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