Highly Paid Administrators and Faculty Members at 4-Year Private Nonprofit Colleges, 2016

Coaches, professors of medicine, chief investment officers, provosts, and general counsels were among the three most highly compensated nonpresidential employees identified by colleges on the 990 forms that they were required to submit to the Internal Revenue Service for the 2016 calendar year. Among those three highest-paid non-chief executives at each institution, two coaches, one leader of a university investment fund, and one professor of medicine were reported as having earned more than $5 million. The three top-paid employees at 500 private nonprofit colleges, along with the compensation of their chief executives, can be found here.

Academics

Athletics

Finance

Law

Medicine

Note: Included in the analysis are the private nonprofit baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral degree-granting institutions that are eligible to participate in Title IV federal aid programs, that primarily award baccalaureate degrees or above, and that had the 500 largest endowments, as reported to the U.S. Department of Education for 2016. Some private nonprofit universities cite a religious exemption from filing the Form 990 to the Internal Revenue Service and were therefore excluded. Chief executives and former chief executives were excluded from the rankings above. The table shows the administrators and faculty members who were listed among the three highest-paid non-chief executives at their institutions on the 990 forms covering the 2016 calendar year, and it ranks them within five categories. Those employees were not necessarily the highest paid over all in their categories because highly paid employees who were not among the top three at their institutions or who were not within the group of 500 colleges in the comparison were not part of the analysis. Job titles are from Form 990s, Schedule J; more detail about some positions was gathered from university websites. Some positions were not held for the entire year. Total compensation is the sum of base pay, bonus and incentive pay, other reportable compensation, and nontaxable benefits. Retirement and other deferred compensation is not included in the total. Questions or comments on the Almanac should be sent to Ruth Hammond.

Sources: Chronicle analysis of Internal Revenue Service data, first published in The Chronicle’s interactive database “Executive Compensation at Private and Public Colleges”

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