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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.
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."
Are they just talking salary? As far as I know university presidents don't have stock options.
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.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
If they fuck up really bad do they still get the golden parachute?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A university president makes little compared to a university football coach. The absurdity is incredible.
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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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?
Ken
The statistical analysis in this article is absolutely appalling. First you are right that they are not comparing to real CEOs. If you look at the data they use for the CEOs this apparently includes local and state government managers and, even worse, primary/elementary and secondary/high schools by which I presume they mean the head teacher which I don't think anyone thinks off when you say 'CEO'.
...which is sad because I actually think they have a point which their article actually does contain the evidence for if only they knew how to analyse it. If you look at the distribution of compensation then you will note that there is a significant tail out to insanely high values and this is where the problem lies. University presidents should get a high salary - certainly higher than the faculty and staff that they manage unless there are exceptional circumstances e.g. Nobel prize winner - but I fail to see how $1m+ salaries can be justified.
If you just look at the "Management of Companies and Enterprises" category then the average wage amount increases significantly to $210,120 but as you note there is no mention anywhere in the article at all about bonuses and it specifically mentions "wages" so I doubt that this is in any way representative of the actual compensation a CEO gets while the article clearly states that they included all bonuses paid to university presidents. This is clearly an appalling abuse of statistics and so any conclusions the article draws cannot be trusted.
In fact the last time the university where I worked advertized for a president four faculty from Arts wrote a joint, open application for the job (which was shared with the local media) to protest against these ridiculously high presidential salaries. As they pointed out you could hire all four of them, give them each a very significant raise (IIRC 50%) and still save money over the out going president's salary and this way they would be able to do four times as much work. Needless to say they were not offered the job!
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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