ABOUT THESE DATA
The Chronicle of Higher Education has prepared a list showing compensation — pay plus benefits — received by each of 4,110 employees at 600 private colleges.
Readers may order this premium content, available in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, for $150, by clicking here.
The figures are for 2006-7, the most recent fiscal year for which comprehensive data are available. The Chronicle compiled the information from the Form 990 that each institution filed with the Internal Revenue Service. According to IRS regulations, tax-exempt entities must file the form annually and must release a copy to those who request it. (Public colleges are exempt from filing because they are government entities.)
The list shows up to seven employees other than the chief executive at each institution. Those include the chief financial and academic officers, who are labeled as such in the spreadsheet. The Chronicle also included the five top-paid employees in other positions who were listed in either of two sections of Form 990. The first shows the pay, benefits, and expenses of the institution’s officers, directors, and key employees. A separate section reports compensation for the top five highest-compensated individuals (who make more than $50,000) who do not appear on the first list. The five top-paid employees on The Chronicle’s list held a variety of job titles, like development and investment officers; athletic coaches; deans of business and law schools; department chairs; and professors.
(Data about the compensation of college chief executives are included in a separate Chronicle database but not in this list.)
The Chronicle’s data are not a complete compilation of employees at all private colleges. We included only those private institutions classified in 2005 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as Research Universities (very high research activity), Research Universities (high research activity), Doctoral/Research Universities, Master’s Colleges and Universities (large, medium, and small), and Baccalaureate Colleges-Arts & Sciences. The Chronicle’s data include colleges that reported at least $20-million in expenditures in 2006-7. At least nine institutions claim religious exemption from filing Form 990.
In general, the information appears here as it was reported on each college’s Form 990. In some cases, colleges did not spell their employees’ names correctly or did not provide full or accurate job titles. The Chronicle attempted to detect and correct those errors, but some may remain in these data.
Colleges did not always specify on their Form 990 which employees were the chief financial and academic officers, so The Chronicle verified which employees to label as such. (The CFO was often the vice president for finance, and the chief academic officer was usually the provost or vice president for academic affairs — but not always.) Some colleges in this list reported no chief financial or academic officer, or they listed fewer than five additional employees.
For more information about this product, you may send an e-mail message to salaries@chronicle.com.
This data set is copyrighted, The Chronicle of Higher Education © 2009. Republication without permission is prohibited.
— Compiled by Jeffrey Brainard, Marisa López-Rivera, Eugene McCormack, Caitlin Moran, Kate Moser, and Joan Waynick.
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 55, Issue 25
