University pays well, but professors can earn more

Professors and administrators aren't rolling in dough.

Though President Tilghman earned $542,875 and Andrew Golden, president of the Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO), earned $1,140,324 in fiscal year 2005, they're not making nearly as much as they would in jobs of similar prominence and responsibility in the private sector.

The University, as a nonprofit, is required to report the salaries of its officers and highest paid employees each year on its 990 tax form.

After Tilghman and Golden, members of PRINCO, which manages the school's endowment, Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 and Genomics Institute Director David Botstein were the highest paid in 2005.

Three managing directors of PRINCO earned between $550,166 and $629,899, while Slaughter took home $370,305 from the University in 2005. Botstein was paid $344,637. Faculty can earn additional money from books, speaking engagements and other outside projects.

In a survey published by the American Association of University Professors in April, tenured faculty at Princeton were paid an average annual salary of $163,700, making the University the fourth-highest paying university in the nation, after Rockefeller, Harvard and Stanford universities.

While these salaries are high relative to the income of average Americans, equally qualified employees in the private sector are paid much more.

Botstein estimated that professors in high-demand industries such as computer science and life sciences earn between half and two-thirds of what they could be making in the private sector. He spent several years working as a vice president of at a pharmaceutical company but chose to return to academe, he said, because "I love teaching, and I enjoyed my life better."

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Faculty jobs can also have the added benefit of tenure and a richer intellectual life.

"Academic jobs have different requirements than industrial jobs, and so it is not reasonable to compare compensation levels and draw any conclusion," Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin said in an e-mail. Dobkin determines faculty compensation.

Even employees of PRINCO are comparatively underpaid. Jonathan Erickson, managing director at PRINCO, spent nine years in the private sector before joining PRINCO nine years ago. Erickson was the second-highest paid employee in fiscal year 2005.

"We are paid a substantial discount [compared to our peers in the private sector], which is fine," Erickson said.

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Daniel Feder, managing director of the private equity portfolio and third-highest paid employee of the University when the 990 was filed for 2005, declined to comment.

Erickson noted that working for the University also had its benefits, such as knowledge that the money earned is directly helping students through financial aid and other endeavors of the University. "[PRINCO] is a far more rewarding place to work," he said.

"We're working for a place that does great things."