US: On private campuses, income gap widens at the top

Within the world of American private higher education, there are a handful of college presidents who earn considerably more than professors on their campuses, or gobble up a notable share of their institutions' budgetary pie, write Jack Stripling and Andrea Fuller for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

According to a Chronicle analysis there are also significant pay gaps among presidents, 36 of whom earned more than $1 million in 2009. A typical private college leader made 3.7 times as much as the average full professor on his or her campus in 2009, but six presidents reviewed by the Chronicle made more than 10 times as much as their faculty colleagues, according to national faculty-salary data and the most recent available federal-tax filings.
Full report on The Chronicle site

Meanwhile, The Irish Times reported last week that the higher earnings of an elite group of academics and administrators, which remains one of the striking features of the Irish education system, was thrown into relief by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn's announcement of a range of spending cuts across the education sector. These cuts will impose further strains on an under-funded Irish education system. In Ireland, average spending per student at all levels of education is among the lowest of the OECD countries: only 16% of GDP is spent on education.
Full report on the Irish Times site