Khator one of nine presidents who made the million dollar club.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Renu Khator, who is at the helm of the University of Houston, is among the top nine highest-paid presidents of public colleges/universities who earned seven-figure salaries in 2013.
A new report from the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) has found that while the average salary for a president of a public college or university in the US is just under half a million dollars, the top nine highest-paid presidents in 2013 earn seven-figure salaries, and two of them are of Asian descent.
Hamid Shirvani and Renu Khator are the third and fourth-highest paid presidents of US higher education institutions. Shirvani was the president of the North Dakota University system, a network of six universities and five colleges throughout the state of North Dakota, until the middle of last year.
According to the CHE report, Shirvani earned a base salary of $349,000 when his tenure with the North Dakota University system ended in June of last year. However, in addition to that salary, he earned a severance payment of $962,095, putting his total earnings from the job at $1,311,095.
Originally from Iran, Shirvani earned his B.A. in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Central London, followed by a Masters in Architecture from the Pratt Institute in New York, an M.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an M.L.A. (Master of Landscape Architecture) from Harvard University, and both an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Prior to his time in North Dakota, Shirvani was also the president of California State University and the California State University Stanislaus, the provost and executive vice-president of Chapman University (a private college in California), a vice-president for graduate studies and research at the CUNY’s Queens College, and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, among other positions.
Khator, meanwhile, earned about $1,266,000 million in 2013. She earns a base salary of $700,000, while other bonuses drove up her total earnings in the seven-figure range. The salary is a substantial one for any high-ranking education executive, but is even more outstanding for the fact that Khator is both a woman and a minority. She was the highest-earning female college or university president in the US in 2013.
Khator is the 13th president of the University of Houston System of colleges. She is the first female Indian American to be the president of a major research university anywhere in the United States. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1973 from the University of Kanpur, followed by her Master’s degree in political science in 1975 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in political science and public administration in 1985, both from Purdue University.
South Asian Americans have made quite a name for themselves in the arena of academic administration, particularly Indian Americans. Several of the top-ranked US-based institutions have Indian American professors and administrators, most notably Harvard.
The world-renowned institution has two Indian Americans in key administrative postings: Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana. The former is the 10th and current Dean of the Harvard Business School, while the latter is currently the Dean of Harvard College, the oldest (and arguably most prestigious) higher education institute in the entire country.
The CHE report found that E. Gordon Gee, the president of West Virginia University, was the highest-paid college or university head last year, having earned $6.1 million through a combination of his salary and a healthy retirement package when he left the position last June.
1 Comment
I am sorry but you said that Dr. Khator is the first female President of UH and that is incorrect. She is the second female President in the schools history. The first female president was that of Dr. Marguerite Ross Barnett. She was also a minority in that she was African American. She only served as President for a year before losing her life to cancer in 1992. I do not knock Dr. Khator but we must fact check before we write an article that claims information that does not reflect accurate information.