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Are CEOs Overpaid? Not Compared With College Presidents (cbsnews.com)

schwit1 writes: For outrageous executive earnings, don't look to Wall Street -- look to academia. High pay for CEOs attracts annual attention and recitations about the immorality of capitalism, but when the focus is on average CEO pay, they make less than half the annual earnings of college presidents, according to CBS News. The average CEO earns $176,840 annually, an amount that would make a university president into a pauper. In academia, college presidents earn $377,261 annually. Americans outraged and indebted by high college costs will be quick to draw the parallel between a college president's pay and their tuition bill. Correlation, though, doesn't imply causation. College presidents aren't always the highest-paid college employees -- athletic coaches often earn more. Regardless, college presidents "are well into the 99th percentile of compensation for wage earners in the United States," Peter L. Hinrichs and Anne Chen noted for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

17 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Seriously thats how they compare? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    classify the businesses into upper, middle and lower groups and redo the comparson.

    1. Re:Seriously thats how they compare? by ohieaux · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A university president may make $500K, but s/he oversees 5000+ employees, 30,000+ students, a campus of 250+ buildings and an endowment of a billion or more. I'm not sure they should be compared with the set of all folks calling themselves CEO.

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    2. Re:Seriously thats how they compare? by njnnja · · Score: 3, Insightful
    3. Re:Seriously thats how they compare? by chipschap · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A university president makes little compared to a university football coach. The absurdity is incredible.

    4. Re:Seriously thats how they compare? by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Not really. People actually value college football. For lots of people, that's the only reason they care whether the college exists at all."

      Hark! Is that another thing wrong with America that I hear?

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    5. Re:Seriously thats how they compare? by guruevi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They typically stay in their position. It's hard to fuck up in these circles short of a little boy sex scandal; if you can't manage the money well, you just raise tuition and the higher your tuition the 'better' your school is considered to be.

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    6. Re:Seriously thats how they compare? by schnell · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Is it a supply and demand situation that sets the salaries or is it like some other situations where you have an in club who give themselves or each other raises?

      In the context of college football/basketball coaches (and ONLY for these two sports which actually make money for a college - the rest are Title IX welfare recipients), it is exactly supply and demand. There are a very limited number of head coaches in these sports who can demonstrate a sustained ability to win. The ability to win (and the stature of the coach and his proven ability to but his players into the NFL/NBA) drives the quality of the recruits for the school. The quality of the recruits and the quality of the coaches together drive the ongoing success of the program, which turns into moving up to better athletic conferences which generate more TV revenues for the school and its athletic program. While most of that money goes right back into the athletic program, it also constitutes in effect free advertising for the university/college as a whole and drives student application interest. A winning football/basketball program creates a virtuous cycle, whereas a losing program creates a downward spiral. Hence the tremendous competition for the best coaches and market-driven pay.

      While some may earnestly question the value of a top-tier athletics program to an institution of learning, that free advertising is hard to deny. Would you have ever heard of smaller schools like St. John's, Georgetown, or Gonzaga without their basketball programs? Would the names Notre Dame, Alabama or Oregon State carry any cachet outside local areas if it weren't for their football teams? How many students applied to these schools who otherwise wouldn't because they knew and loved these schools for their athletics?

      I got my undergrad degree at a small school (University of Richmond) with a good academic reputation but little national brand name recognition. Yet I know that my undergrad alma mater's admission applications go up every year after it makes one of its irregular trips to the NCAA Tournament... so the colleges overall are clearly getting something out of it, and as long as the athletics programs are paying for themselves, why not?

      --
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  2. Is that really true? by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The average CEO earns $176,840 annually, an amount that would make a university president into a pauper

    Are they including self-proprietorships or something?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. salary? by SYSS+Mouse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are they just talking salary? As far as I know university presidents don't have stock options.

  4. Highly Misleading Title and Summary by Zelucifer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    " If college presidents were to divide up their pay and write out checks to all their students, the per-person payout would be fairly low, amounting to no more than $300 per student."

    The article is about the cost of overall administrative overhead, not just college presidents. The summary itself is even more misleading, as it attempts to compare base salary's between two very disparate fields. A CEO of a normal "wall street" company makes on average 20% of there income as salary. The rest of there income comes from bonuses, benefits and incentives. A large percentage of which is in the form of stock, something a college will not offer.

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    The corner of a round room
  5. Big Education by BECoole · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Brought to you courtesy of Big Govt handing out Big Money and encouraging Big Student Loans.

    This is what happens when an industry is subsidized.

  6. Re:What does this have to do with technology? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Slashdot does purport to be a tech news site, last time I checked, and this is neither "news for nerds" nor "stuff that matters" (unless you are one of the vanishingly few that happens to work in higher education).

    Hate to break the bad news for you. Not all Slashdot readers live in their mother's basement. Most of us worked in the Big Blue Room with the Big Yellow Light upstairs (a.k.a, Real World). Some of us financial wonks don't mind see an article or two on the economy.

  7. You called it! by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are they just talking salary? As far as I know university presidents don't have stock options.

    You called it. Stock, bonuses, and golden-handshakes are where the money is. The salary is just covering "base load", to keep the wolf away from the Yacht's dock gate while the company isn't doing well enough that the big bucks aren't flowing adequately.

    That's why turnaround CEOs can do the "dollar a year salary" thing for P.R. without hurting themselves financially.

    --
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  8. idiots or propaganda by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are they total idiots, or being paid?

    Of course the average CEO doesn't earn a killing. I'm a CEO. I make less than I did when I had a regular job.

    The problem has never been the average CEO. The problem is the high-end CEOs. The guys who run banks, fortune 500 companies and such, who earn several thousand times what normal employees or, in fact, average CEOs make.

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  9. Compare what to WHAT? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Holy moly, this story is a lot of horseshit. There are one thousand, eight hundred and forty five private universities in the US. In 2010, there were 27.9 million businesses in the United States, and 18,500 or so have more than 500 employees. That means that at least 27.8 million of those businesses are what you'd call small businesses, which can mean one employee who happens to be the CEO for his little corporation that sells t-shirts on Etsy. I guarantee that the average salary of one of those corporations with more than 500 employees is a great deal more than the average university president where there are more than 500 employees.

    So what we have here are two things being compared. One of which is defined and the other which is not. Does anyone know what you get when you take the average of something that is not defined?

    I swear to Jesus, it's no wonder people are so dizzy that they're willing to vote for the spawn of Biff Tanner and Benito Mussolini for president. This is what they get for news.

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    You are welcome on my lawn.
  10. Re: tip of the administrative iceberg by kenh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Free college is completely unaffordable for any government budget otherwise.

    There's a dirty little secret regarding the European 'free college' program - only qualified, prepared students get to attend college - it is a meritocracy, not a guaranteed entitlement.

    In America we have a staggering number of college dropouts with debt accumulated taking remedial classes after high school.

    In most European universities only the students that place well on standardized testing earn spots at 'free' universities. Academically-deficient high school graduates will never get the chance to attend university.

    What's going to happen when inner-city parents realize all the 'free' university spots are filled with students that attended better schools in the suburbs? Will they demand universities lower their standards, demand their high schools get better, or demand affirmative action spots on campus?

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    Ken
  11. Re:Why does that bother you? by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Odd that the NFL needs to go begging for public funds to build their stadiums, isn't it? Those billionaire beggars have no shame.

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