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Abstract

While CEO compensation has been widely explored (Huang, 2010), there is also debate about whether university presidents are equitably paid given university budget cuts and rising tuition rates (Ehrenberg, Cheslock, and Epifantseva, 2001; Cotton, 2012). We explore possible determinants of compensation for university presidents of 419 private and 160 public universities. We hypothesize about the effects of enrollment, endowment, and employee size; graduation and retention rates; and other institutional factors on presidents’ compensation and use regression analysis to test these hypotheses. We find strong support for a positive effect of enrollment on university presidents’ pay levels, but this effect is moderated by institutional control.

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