Executive Compensation at Leading Private Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts

Joshua Humphreys, Catie Ferrara, Bryant Mason

September 2011

In recent decades, as the cost to attend a private college or university has spiraled upward, increasing numbers of senior college administrators have received six- and seven-figure compensation packages that place them at the upper echelons of the national income distribution. Meanwhile, the financial crisis of 2008–09 appears to have done little to dampen the size of compensation packages received by the most highly paid college officials, even as colleges themselves have imposed draconian cuts upon programs and lower-level staff. This brief provides an analysis of excessive executive compensation at the 20 most well-endowed private colleges and universities in Massachusetts.

“[One] of the most trenchant, clear reports on the foibles of higher education finance since The Jungle muckracker Upton Sinclair self-published The Goose-Step: A Study of American Higher Education in 1922.”

–Wick Sloane in Inside Higher Ed