Yale's $8.5 million payout to its former president Richard Levin is the subject of a news article in the Wall Street Journal, which adds some interesting context to two other articles: this one from Tablet magazine on the current Yale president, Peter Salovey, calling on Yale's graduating seniors to go fix the world, and this one, a column by Frank Bruni in the New York Times, on what Mr. Bruni calls "the shockingly lucrative deals that have become almost commonplace among college presidents." Mr. Levin's payout was even larger than the one E. Gordon Gee got from Ohio State, which Mr. Bruni also writes about.
So long as donors are willing to keep giving to institutions that pay at these levels, so long as parents keep paying tuition, and so long as politicians keep approving federal research funding, Pell grants, and subsidized student loans, expect presidential pay levels to keep rising.
