Adelphi, NYIT presidents on top salaries list

Two Long Island college presidents made more than $1 million and are on a list released Sunday night that highlights the seven-figure compensation of 36 private-college leaders.

Robert A. Scott, president of Adelphi University in Garden City, ranked No. 19 on the list with a total compensation package of $1.22 million.

Edward Guiliano, president of New York Institute of Technology at Old Westbury, was No. 21 with $1.18 million, according to the survey, reported annually by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Compensation for private-college presidents has continued to drift upward, while the number crossing the $1 million barrier -- a signal of prestige, and a magnet for criticism -- held steady at 36, according to the survey.

The latest annual compilation covers data from 2010 due to lag time in the release of federal tax information.

That year, median compensation for the 494 presidents participating in the survey -- leaders of institutions with budgets of at least $50 million -- was $396,649, or 2.8 percent higher than in the previous year.

But median base salary fell slightly, by less than 1 percent.

Scott, 73, of Garden City, has been Adelphi's president since July 2000. A university spokeswoman said that due to his contract renewal in 2010, he was "required to cash out accumulated accrued deferred compensation." Spokeswoman Lori Duggan Gold said "this resulted in a one-time payment to him, included in this report, in addition to his annual salary."

She said this year Scott's total compensation is less than half the amount in the survey.

A spokeswoman for NYIT declined to comment. "The compensation of President Edward Guiliano is a matter of public record. The university has no comment."

The highest paid college president was Bob Kerrey, who was head of The New School in New York until December 2010, before he returned to Nebraska, where he made an unsuccessful run to return to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. Kerrey's total compensation was more than $3 million.

His base salary was just over $600,000, but he received a $1.2 million retention bonus and more than $132,000 in deferred compensation, $692,000 in other compensation, and $420,000 in nontaxable benefits.

It is common for such payments to inflate compensation for presidents in their final year in a position.

Three presidents in 2010's top 10 are no longer at those institutions: Kerrey; David Pollick of Birmingham-Southern College; and Steven Sample of the University of Southern California.

The highest paid in 2010 who remains on the job is Shirley Ann Jackson of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York near Albany, who was No. 2 at $2.34 million, followed by Pollick, at $2.31 million.

The highest base salary belonged to John Sexton of New York University and totaled $1.24 million out of $1.48 million total compensation.

As for the Long Island schools, Hofstra University president Stuart Rabinowitz was No. 38 on the list. His total compensation in 2010 was $987,699.

LIU Post's David J. Steinberg ranked No. 95. As president of the Brookville campus, he made $615,274, while Drew Bogner, president of Molloy College in Rockville Centre, came in at No. 159 with a total compensation package of $498,197.

With Candice Ferrette