Surprisingly, Pamela Whitten isn’t one of Indiana University’s top five earners.
Pamela Whitten: Leading Indiana University
Pamela Whitten was appointed Indiana University’s first female president in 2021
Although news of her raises and six figure bonuses consistently make headlines, President Pamela Whitten actually isn’t the top earner at Indiana University. In fact, she’s not even one of the top five at the flagship institution.
Despite earning $896,128 with bonuses in 2024 (her base salary was bumped to $900,000 in 2025), Whitten was only the seventh highest-paid employee in the IU system last year. Football coach Curt Cignetti, former men’s basketball coach Mike Woodson and women’s basketball coach Teri Moren represented the three highest-paid IU employees in 2024, with salaries between $1.4 to $6.4 million.
Interestingly, Whitten wasn’t even the highest-paid administrator; that was IU School of Medicine Dean Jay Hess, who made about $230,000 more than Whitten and was IU’s sixth biggest earner, earning $1,128,338 in 2025.
Looking at the IU system’s top earners through the publicly accessible Indiana Gateway website offers interesting insights into institutional diversity, changing bureaucracy and shifting economic priorities for the state’s flagship university. Here are some interesting findings.
Athletic leadership is the largest portion of IU’s top 50 earners
IU has long recognized the importance of athletics in driving up revenue and name recognition for the school, and that’s increasingly reflected in the institution’s top earners.
In 2024, 19 of IU’s top 50 earners were IU Athletics coaches and directors. That’s nearly twice the number of athletic leaders who were in the top 50 in 2020.
Chief among the top earners last year were Curt Cignetti at $6,491,987 and Mike Woodson at $4,303,186. Former Head Football Coach Tom Allen was technically the highest-paid employee at IU last year, though he hasn’t been employed at IU since 2023; his $7.7 million salary was about half of his $15.5 million buyout settlement from when he was fired in 2023.
IU’s top earners are predominantly white, male
While IU is notable for Pamela Whitten’s leadership — just shy of 33% of university presidents are women, according to a 2023 study by the American Council on Education — IU still has few women and non-white leaders in its top-paid positions.
Just six of IU’s top 50 earners in 2024 were women, and only one — IU Indianapolis Chancellor Latha Ramchand — was a woman of color.
And of IU’s top 50 earners, just 16 were Black, Asian, or otherwise non-white in 2024.
How are wages increasing for IU’s top administrators?
Pamela Whitten makes significantly more than other top administrators at IU, though IU School of Medicine Dean Jay Hess is the system’s top-paid administrator, earning more than $1 million in 2024.
And even though Whitten’s raises and bonuses are frequent subjects of debate, other administrators and leadership in the system have received more significant raises than Whitten — relative to their base salaries, at least — since 2022.
Between 2022 and 2024, IU Bloomington Provost Rahul Shrivastav’s compensation grew from about $466,000 to around $560,000. Scott Shackleford, IU’s associate vice president and vice chancellor for research, saw his compensation grow by over $100,000, from about $448,222 in 2022 to $556,139 in 2024.
The most significant increase between 2022 and 2024 was for Vice President and General Counsel Tony Prather, who joined IU in late February of 2022. Since then, his compensation has grown from just below $400,000 in 2022 to around $542,000 in 2024 — an approximately 36% increase.
Reach Brian Rosenzweig at brian@heraldt.com. Follow him on X/Twitter at @brianwritesnews.