A growing number of college presidents are on easy street, despite the tough economic roads that both public and private institutions are traveling.
The best-paid leaders are at private institutions. The ranks of private-college leaders who earn in excess of $500,000 annually increased by 56 percent from the 2002 to the 2003 fiscal years, the most recent years for which data are available. Until 2000, no more than a dozen presidents of private colleges made that much money. Now, 42 presidents are over the half-million mark.