slides: Highest Paid College Presidents in Central Mass.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Paige Pihl Buckley, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

Robert E. Johnson, Ph.D., President of Becker College.

With tuitions continuing to climb, expenditures at colleges and universities are coming under increasing scrutiny. With that in mind, GoLocalWorcester took a look at what the presidents of local colleges are getting paid each year – and the findings might be surprising.

To see the salaries of 11 college presidents in Central Massachusetts, go to the slides, below.

First is the $0 salary of College of the Holy Cross president Reverend Philip Boroughs. As a Jesuit, Boroughs forgoes any financial compensation for his work, explained Bridget Cass, media relations manager at the College of the Holy Cross. His housing and all other necessities are provided by the college.

Another surprise - ten of the colleges or universities from which GoLocalWorcester obtained information paid their presidents less than the median salary for a public university president, despite many being private institutions (only one, WPI, posted a higher salary than the median for its previous president, but the current interim president's salary is not available for current comparison). According to the Chronicle for Higher Education, the median salary for college presidents rose 4.7 percent to $441,392 in 2012.

The closest to that number on the Central Massachusetts roster was Becker College president Robert E. Johnson who was paid $394,014 in 2011, according to the most recent IRS Form 990 available to the public. On top of his salary, Johnson took home an additional $42,864 from his position at Becker College. Though not specified in tax forms additional compensation often refers to deferred payments and other benefits packages.

What Are Other Bay State Presidents Making?

Though those numbers may seem large to the majority of Central Massachusetts’ residents, they are less than half of what some Bay State university presidents make. Last year Boston University president Robert A. Brown took home $1,141,330, and Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun took home $1,069,510. And neither of those salaries could hold a candle to that of former Penn State president Graham Spanier who, despite being ousted midway through the fiscal year because of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, took home $2.9 million last year.

The salaries for the president Philip B. Ryan of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and president Charles F. Monahan, Jr. of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Applied Health Sciences (MCPHS) were unavailable on public databases.

WPI: Leading the pack

Warner E. Fletcher, chairman of the Board of Trustees at WPI, said that it was against university policy to disclose personal information like salaries, but that the salary had been determined by that of competitive universities. Ryan was appointed interim president of WPI in June of this year, following the departure of Dennis D. Berkey.

According to the 2011 IRS Form 990 for WPI, Berkey was paid $761,660 with additional compensation of $95,367 in his last year as president. If Ryan's salary is comprable to Berkey's, he is not only the highest paid college president in Central Massachusetts, but among the highest paid in the state.

And while Central Massachusetts' leading science and technology institution may lead the salary pack locally, its compensation pales up against the in-state competition, MIT. Former Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Susan Hockfield was paid a total of $1,199,877, including all benefits, that same year, according to MIT's school newspaper The Tech.

The salary of Charles F. Monahan, Jr. was not listed on the 2012 IRS Form 990 available on Guidestar, though he was listed as having filed the form. MCPHS is a private college, so the salaries of its employees are not available via the Massachusetts Open Checkbook Payroll Database.

See the Central MA college presidents' salaries, below.

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

Email to a friend Permalink