The base salary of the most highly compensated chief executive of a private nonprofit institution in 2016 — Kenneth W. Starr, of Baylor University — represented less than 7 percent of his total compensation. Most of his pay that year originated from a severance agreement. The highest-paid female chief executive was Amy Gutmann, of the University of Pennsylvania, who ranked third on the list. Only eight of the 50 highest-paid chief executives of private nonprofit colleges were women. Detailed compensation data for more than 500 chief executives of private colleges in 2016 can be found here.
| Rank | Chief executive | Institution | Total compensation | Base salary | Base salary as percent of total compensation |
| 1. | Kenneth W. Starr* | Baylor U. | $4,946,996 | $338,174 | 6.8% |
| 2. | Lee C. Bollinger | Columbia U. | $3,927,961 | $1,371,910 | 34.9% |
| 3. | Amy Gutmann | U. of Pennsylvania | $3,211,681 | $1,312,971 | 40.9% |
| 4. | Victor J. Boschini Jr. | Texas Christian U. | $2,864,303 | $1,090,962 | 38.1% |
| 5. | Edward Guiliano | New York Institute of Technology | $2,733,651 | $766,712 | 28.1% |
| 6. | Nido Qubein | High Point U. | $2,368,358 | $663,870 | 28.0% |
| 7. | Stephen C. Ainlay | Union College (N.Y.) | $2,289,549 | $528,625 | 23.1% |
| 8. | Paula S. Wallace | Savannah College of Art and Design | $2,043,120 | $930,889 | 45.6% |
| 9. | Joel Seligman | U. of Rochester | $1,990,250 | $1,253,000 | 63.0% |
| 10. | Julio Frenk | U. of Miami | $1,861,159 | $1,123,370 | 60.4% |
| 11. | C.L. Max Nikias | U. of Southern California | $1,768,947 | $1,331,610 | 75.3% |
| 12. | Robert A. Brown | Boston U. | $1,672,442 | $1,012,150 | 60.5% |
| 13. | Helen G. Drinan | Simmons College | $1,656,654 | $477,241 | 28.8% |
| 14. | Robert J. Zimmer | U. of Chicago | $1,625,136 | $1,090,844 | 67.1% |
| 15. | Morton O. Schapiro | Northwestern U. | $1,617,258 | $1,013,556 | 62.7% |
| 16. | Subra Suresh | Carnegie Mellon U. | $1,608,582 | $821,047 | 51.0% |
| 17. | Nariman Farvardin | Stevens Institute of Technology | $1,583,817 | $734,013 | 46.3% |
| 18. | John L. Lahey | Quinnipiac U. | $1,577,816 | $1,060,000 | 67.2% |
| 19. | Barbara R. Snyder | Case Western Reserve U. | $1,549,558 | $725,097 | 46.8% |
| 20. | Andrew Hamilton | New York U. | $1,540,848 | $1,368,434 | 88.8% |
| 21. | Stuart Rabinowitz | Hofstra U. | $1,501,714 | $770,979 | 51.3% |
| 22. | Shirley Ann Jackson | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | $1,450,318 | $1,110,000 | 76.5% |
| 23. | Ronald J. Daniels | Johns Hopkins U. | $1,438,323 | $1,214,281 | 84.4% |
| 24. | John J. DeGioia | Georgetown U. | $1,436,230 | $601,169 | 41.9% |
| 25. | John A. Fry | Drexel U. | $1,359,424 | $782,273 | 57.5% |
| 26. | Charles J. Dougherty* | Duquesne U. | $1,354,464 | $376,333 | 27.8% |
| 27. | Ronald R. Thomas* | U. of Puget Sound | $1,334,180 | $250,309 | 18.8% |
| 28. | David W. Leebron | Rice U. | $1,333,175 | $869,764 | 65.2% |
| 29. | R. Gerald Turner | Southern Methodist U. | $1,332,101 | $736,561 | 55.3% |
| 30. | Anne C. Steele* | Muskingum U. | $1,317,331 | $354,848 | 26.9% |
| 31. | Joseph E. Aoun | Northeastern U. | $1,315,272 | $861,213 | 65.5% |
| 32. | Christina Hull Paxson | Brown U. | $1,307,049 | $725,074 | 55.5% |
| 33. | Mark S. Wrighton | Washington U. in St. Louis | $1,296,952 | $996,654 | 76.9% |
| 34. | Peter Salovey | Yale U. | $1,282,777 | $1,012,838 | 79.0% |
| 35. | Richard H. Brodhead | Duke U. | $1,273,594 | $994,475 | 78.1% |
| 36. | Dennis J. Murray* | Marist College | $1,270,933 | $487,113 | 38.3% |
| 37. | James L. Doti* | Chapman U. | $1,266,854 | $591,600 | 46.7% |
| 38. | Anthony G. Collins | Clarkson U. | $1,231,838 | $506,595 | 41.1% |
| 39. | Steven Knapp | George Washington U. | $1,230,670 | $933,090 | 75.8% |
| 40. | Daniele Struppa* | Chapman U. | $1,216,909 | $566,914 | 46.6% |
| 41. | Robert Fisher | Belmont U. | $1,199,724 | $992,157 | 82.7% |
| 42. | John L. Hennessy* | Stanford U. | $1,185,774 | $1,056,487 | 89.1% |
| 43. | Wayne Frederick | Howard U. | $1,177,151 | $1,014,688 | 86.2% |
| 44. | Philip Hanlon | Dartmouth College | $1,164,885 | $968,386 | 83.1% |
| 45. | James W. Wagner* | Emory U. | $1,138,491 | $1,077,337 | 94.6% |
| 46. | Michael A. Fitts | Tulane U. | $1,127,000 | $867,000 | 76.9% |
| 47. | Hunter R. Rawlings III* | Cornell U. | $1,119,546 | $704,776 | 63.0% |
| 48. | Drew Gilpin Faust | Harvard U. | $1,099,660 | $905,461 | 82.3% |
| 49. | L. Rafael Reif | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | $1,089,227 | $908,515 | 83.4% |
| 50. | Nathan O. Hatch | Wake Forest U. | $1,087,580 | $862,932 | 79.3% |
* Served for only part of 2016.
Note: Rank is for total compensation in the 2016 calendar year. Included in total compensation, in addition to base pay, are bonus pay, nontaxable benefits like medical benefits, severance pay, payouts of deferred compensation, and any other reportable pay. Not counted is deferred or retirement compensation set aside in the calendar year to be paid out in later years. The Chronicle’s analysis is based on data for the private nonprofit baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral institutions that have the 500 largest endowments, as reported to the U.S Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and that primarily award baccalaureate degrees and above. The top-50 list is drawn from data covering 559 presidents and chancellors who served at 501 institutions for all or part of 2016. The average total compensation for leaders in office for the full year at those institutions was $560,000. Nonprofit colleges that do not report the value of their endowments to the Education Department were excluded from the analysis. Compensation data were compiled from the Internal Revenue Service’s Form 990, which is filed by most nonprofit entities. Some private nonprofit universities cite a religious exemption from filing the Form 990 and were excluded from the analysis. Questions or comments on the Almanac should be sent to the Almanac editor.
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