Due to a reporting error, the years in which President Joseph Aoun received his salary were incorrectly identified in a previous version of this article. President Aoun made $589,663 in 2006-07 and $737,863 in 2007-08.
Despite economic downturn and a significant drop in the university’s endowment, Northeastern President Joseph Aoun’s salary increased $140,200 from Fiscal Year 2007 to Fiscal Year 2008, according to annual surveys published by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
President Aoun’s salary rose from $589,663 to $737,863, a 25 percent increase. Boston University President Robert A. Brown was paid $804,639 – a more than $97,000 decrease from his salary previous fiscal year.
Vice President of Marketing and Communications Mike Armini declined to comment about the survey.
“It’s longstanding university policy not to comment on compensation of employees or other personnel matters,” he said in an e-mail to The News.
Northeastern’s endowment declined about 30 percent since October 2007, according to a Faculty Senate report published in August. The report also said the university cut $12 million out of its operating budget last fall.
In what Aoun called an “anti-retrenchment” move in March, however, the university began searching for 46 new faculty members, The News reported March 12.
Aoun was the fourth-highest paid Boston-area university president, according to the report. Suffolk University’s president, David J. Sargent, was the highest-paid for the second year in a row with $1.5 million in salary and benefits, the Boston Globe reported Monday. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Susan Hockfield came second with $875,632, and BU’s Brown came in third. Harvard President Drew Faust was paid $693,739, sixth-most in the area.
In addition to his pay, Aoun lives in a 9,000 square foot, $8.96 million house on Beacon Hill, paid for by the university in 2009.
The median salary for university presidents nationwide rose 6.5 percent to $358,746, according to a The Chronicle of Higher Education survey published Monday.
At private research universities, however, median pay rose 15 percent to $627,000. One quarter of presidents nationwide earns more than $500,000, according to the report.
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