Harvard Pays Professors Top Dollar

Harvard’s endowment might be down, but members of the Harvard faculty are still raking in cash—at least compared to their peers.

Harvard provides the highest average salary to professors (at $191,200), followed by Columbia University and University of Chicago, according to the New York Times. Yale took 6th place at $174,100.

A recent annual study by the American Association of University Professors found that the salaries of full-time faculty increased by about 1.2 percent this year, which is a smaller increase than it has been in 50 years.

It is important to note that the ranking of raw salary numbers does not take into account the cost of living in certain areas (and we know Cambridge isn’t exactly the cheapest locale), or early retirement plans that long-time professors (a.k.a the most highly paid) might have taken advantage of in the past year, bringing down the institutions’ average salaries.

But even though the faculty at Harvard may be making big bucks, President Faust’s pay does not come close to topping the list. Faust’s salary ranks 56 in a list of the highest paid college presidents released at the end of last semester.