Vanderbilt salaries are recession proof
February 23, 2009
From the recent New York Times analysis of a Chronicle of Higher Education report, Vanderbilt breaks the top ten with two employees in highest paid private university officials category. Vanderbilt represents in the top ten in the following categories: highest paid chief executive, highest paid financial officer and highest paid academic officers.
The new Chronicle analysis of pay data listed the 10 highest-paid employees other than chief executives, the 10 highest- paid financial officers and the 10 highest-paid academic officers. Only Emory University andVanderbilt University were represented on all three lists.
Vanderbilt had two of the highest-paid employees on the top 10 list: Dr. Harry R. Jacobson, the vice chancellor for health affairs, and Norman B. Urmy, the former executive vice president for clinical affairs, who stepped down in June 2006. Each had a pay package worth more than $2.4 million.
Vanderbilt also had the highest-paid academic officer, Nicholas S. Zeppos, who earned $1,046,751, and the second-highest-paid financial officer, Lauren Brisky, who earned $1,159,197 and is retired as of this month.
In 2007, The Chronicle has reported, Vanderbilt also had the highest-paid university chief in the nation — E. Gordon Gee, who forfeited about half of his $2 million compensation package when he left to become president of Ohio State University.
Mr. Zeppos then succeeded him as chancellor of Vanderbilt last March.
Given university and board politics, I can actually see why Vanderbilt would divert vast resources to clinical and health affairs, being that research and medical residencies are highly sought after in Nashville, but overall academic affairs and management- not so much.
