Determinants of Presidential Pay at National Liberal Arts Institutions

This paper examines the structure and determinants of presidential pay at nationally ranked baccalaureate institutions. This study departs from previous work on president pay in two ways. First, it includes more nationally ranked liberal arts institutions in its sample than previous studies did. Second, it incorporates two additional determinants of presidential pay borrowed from the executive compensation literature: differential motivations or goals and risk. The results suggest that both motivational differences and risk factors yield differential returns to the determinants of presidential pay depending on which of the four college tiers the president's institution belongs to.