The Star Tribune journalizes on a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscriber access only) on the compensation of college & university presidents. I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing that Carleton's president is the subject of the very first sentence in the Strib piece: "The yearly paycheck and benefits for Carleton College's president more than doubled in eight years, to $446,586." The comparisons to other presidents in the state are instructive: Bruininks at the U earns $537,821. On the other hand, the quote from anti-tax crusader David Strom ("To have a small college [Carleton] with 1,800 to 2,000 students paying its president almost half a million dollars seems out of line") is ridiculous: would he say that same thing about the well-compensated CEO of a small firm? I doubt it.
The article only hints at the national scene: "Carleton College President Robert Oden Jr.'s $446,586 total compensation ranked 115th out of 832 private colleges examined. And a number of colleges that might be considered comparable to Carleton -- such as Iowa's Grinnell College, Massachusetts' Williams College, and North Carolina's Davidson College -- pay their presidents more." Looking at the sources for the Strib article - a set of articles and tables published by the Chronicle of Higher Education - backs up that statement: Carleton's a middle-of-the-pack kind of institution when it comes to presidential compensation. After Roger H. Hull, the president at Union College (N.Y.), who earned $1,024,652 in 2004-2005, the compensation comes down around the Carleton level, with the rest of the presidents in the top ten earning from $593,548 (Frances D. Fergusson, Vassar College) to $473,415 (Larry P. Arnn, Hillsdale College - that bastion of libertarian higher ed). You have to go to a private university to earn the really big money: the tenth-ranked executive at a private university - John E. Sexton, New York University - earned $798,989; the number-one private university executive - Audrey K. Doberstein at Wilmington College (who? where?) pulled down $2,746,241.