College exec pay at a noticeable high
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Steve Chiotakis: President-elect Barack Obama says the nation will continue to struggle with a real-estate meltdown and higher unemployment for a while. And he dismissed talk of trying to reduce the nation’s yearly deficits for a while.
And in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, he said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has worked hard to address the nation’s economic woes, but admitted things haven’t gone smoothly through the process.
President-elect Barack Obama: And I think Hank would be the first one to acknowledge that probably not everything that’s been done has worked the way he had hoped it would work.
Wall Street isn’t the only place where executive salaries are raising some eyebrows. There’s a report out today that shows college presidents are making more than ever. For some, those
paychecks get even bigger with some extra-curricular activities. And here’s Marketplace’s Renita Jablonski.
Renita Jablonski: The Chronicle of Higher Education say pay for top executives at public research universities was up almost 8 percent for the last school year.
Chronicle editor Jeff Selingo says most of those salary decisions were made before the financial crisis.
Jeff Selingo: That being said, I still think that this is likely to cause some controversy.
The Chronicle reports half of the presidents at the country’s 40 top public and private schools also sit on corporate boards.
Take Gorden Gee, the president of Ohio State. He sits on four, including Hasbro, Limited Brands, and Massey Energy.
Selingo: For Massey Energy he gets $113,000 in cash, another $77,000 in stock awards. I mean, you add up all this plus his salary . . .
And it’s a lot of money. Gee’s already the highest-paid public university president.
His annual compensation from OSU tops more than $1.3 million.
I’m Renita Jablonski for Marketplace.
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