Who are the highest paid university personnel at Northern Illinois University?

The answer: the football coach is #1, the president comes in at #2.  Coaches, the athletic director, and non-academic administrators round out most of the rest of the top 15 earners at NIU.

The cost of these top 15 positions for the NIU budget: $2.7 million.  This is equivalent to 42 faculty positions at the assistant professor level!

The AAUP Faculty Salary Survey, republished by the Chronicle of Higher Education, lists the average salary of a Northern Illinois University  Assistant Professor as $64,300.  Simply divide the $2,700,000 spent on the top 15 positions by this average faculty salary to get the 42 faculty positions that could be weighed against those athletic and administrative personnel.

Read the full list and related story at the Northern Star online.

Professors will not be surprised at all by this list.  The number of non-academic administrators and the size of their salaries has continued to grow nationwide, bloating the cost of higher education. In contrast, faculty numbers and real salaries have remained flat over the past generation.  [See previous posts and numerous articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education for further information and data regarding these trends.]

Northern Illinois University students and faculty will want to consider personnel issues, as budget cuts continue throughout the Illinois’s higher educational system.