Brody ninth on list of top-paid presidents

By: Pooja Shah

Posted: 11/20/08

For the 2007 fiscal year, President William Brody was the ninth most highly compensated president of a private university or college, according to a report released by The Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this week.

Brody's total annual compensation is determined by the Board of Trustees of the university. For 2007, it was $1,060,772, down from $1,938,024 in 2006. According to Dennis O'Shea, university spokesman, although Brody's total compensation decreased, his university salary actual increased in 2007.

The total compensation reported by The Chronicle is a sum of Brody's university salary, benefits, deferred compensation and additional compensation by the Johns Hopkins Health System. Brody serves as chairman for the executive committee of Johns Hopkins Medicine, a separate corporation from the university, and receives compensation from the health system for his work in that position.

The breakdown of Brody's total 2007 compensation results in $614,805 in university salary, $145,967 in benefits and $300,000 from the Johns Hopkins Health System.

Comparatively, his 2006 university salary was lower at $571,782. However, his total compensation in 2006 was several hundred dollars more than last year due to $920,438 in deferred compensation he received.

The deferred compensation amount included payments accumulated over nine years. It consisted of $421,911 of Brody's own salary that he chose to defer for a time and $170,527 of investment earnings on the deferred amount.

The rest of the deferred compensation was $328,000 in deferred bonuses awarded to Brody by the trustees over the years, which were payable only if he remained at the University for a specific amount of time.

According to O'Shea, these bonuses and the condition of payment were the trustees' way of giving Brody an extra incentive to remain as president, which they very much wanted him to do.

Jerry Schnydman, secretary of the Board of Trustees and executive assistant to the President, explained that Brody's salary is determined based on how the Board feels he has fulfilled his responsibilities as President.

"The trustees believe that Brody's salary is a fair and reasonable one - in fact, a modest one - considering his responsibilities and excellent performance," O'Shea wrote in an e-mail.

Brody's role as president of the university includes responsibility over 10 schools, the Applied Physics Laboratory, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Health System.

"In my view he's underpaid," Schnydman said. "As his executive assistant, I've seen the demands [of this job] on his time - morning, noon and night."

According to O'Shea, during Brody's tenure as President, he has strengthened the University in numerous ways, which the trustees have noted when they annually assess his performance.

"Over the past 12 years, the University has consistently been among the top five or six universities nationally in fundraising," O'Shea wrote. In addition, during Brody's presidency, several Hopkins campuses have undergone construction and renovation, while the endowment has increased significantly and the University continues to win more research funding than any other university.

To date, Brody has raised upwards of $3.1 billion in the Knowledge for the World Campaign. This $3.2-billion fundraising campaign is aimed to support students, faculty, facilities and research programs that develop solutions to issues of the world, and it is scheduled to end on Dec. 31 of this year, coinciding with Brody's original retirement date, which was extended to March 1.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that between the 2006 and 2007 fiscal years, the median compensation of college presidents increased by 7.6 percent. This has raised concerns nationally about the burden put on students and their families in these difficult economic times, as university presidents' salaries are going up.

O'Shea explained that considering Brody's broad scope of duties, his salary is reasonable.

"[Brody] heads the largest private employer in Maryland," O'Shea wrote. "It's a highly complex organization with 45,000 employees. It's essentially a $6.6-billion corporation. Is he getting paid like the CEO of a $6.6-billion corporation? Not even close."

Freshman Richard Powers agrees that Brody's compensation is not excessive.

"Compared to other top executives in the country, I don't think he's being grossly overpaid considering the amount of money the University has," Powers said.

It is not known whether Brody's salary for the 2008 fiscal year followed this upward national trend. The salary information cannot be released until they are reported to the government in University tax papers next year.