On March 28, Ontario released its 2023 Sunshine List — the annual record of all public sector employees in the province with salaries over $100,000 per year.

The list revealed that 69 out of the top 100 highest earners in the university hold positions in or are otherwise affiliated with the Rotman School of Management, with their average salary being $453,422. The Varsity has previously reported that Rotman professors are among the highest-paid employees at the school, but why is this the case?

In honour of the Money Issue, The Varsity broke down U of T’s 2023 Sunshine List and examined why Rotman faculty members are on top. 

2023 Sunshine List statistical overview

The 2023 Ontario Sunshine List featured a total of 5,946 U of T employees, with the average salary being $169,607. 

The university’s overall top earner was Strategic Management Professor Brian Golden, who earned $650,860. He is followed by Strategic Management Professor Brian Silverman and Accounting Professor Wei-Yi (Scott) Liao, who earned $611,828 and $570,724, respectively. All three professors hold positions at Rotman, and have maintained their spots on the ranking from 2022.

U of T President Meric Gertler earned the most out of the university’s administrative sector, with a salary of $486,192. This makes him the 23rd highest-earning employee of the university — up one-spot from the previous year, when he earned $438,892. He is followed by former Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr, who earned $441,155 as the 37th highest paid employee overall.

The most common position for employees on the list was Senior Research Associate, with 75 individuals holding this title and an average salary of $124,092. This was followed by electrical and computer engineering professors, who earned an average of $245,219, and professors of education, with an average salary of $219,004. 

Among the list’s 5,946 employees, 47.3 per cent were women, with an average salary of $157,973 compared to $180,599 for men. 

U of T’s 2023 list featured 13.3 per cent more employees than in 2022, with a 17.1 per cent increase in total salaries paid. Senior Executive Director, Student Mental Health Systems, Policy and Strategy, Christina Bartha, received the highest salary increase at 155.55 per cent, raising her salary from $105,580 to $274,036 in 2023.

U of T’s three federated colleges, which are incorporated separately from the university, have their own Sunshine Lists. The University of St. Michael’s College featured 39 employees in 2023, with an average salary of $150,030. Victoria University had 63 employees, with an average salary of $146,308, while Trinity College listed 26 employees with an average salary of $137,998. 

The highest earning employees at each college were President and Vice-Chancellor David Sylvester ($326,000), Bursar Raymond Desouza ($235,247), and Faculty of Divinity Professor Marsha Hewitt ($240,545), respectively. 

Rotman on top

Employees affiliated with Rotman are paid handsomely. Of the 100 highest-paid U of T employees in 2023, 69 held positions, cross-appointments, or taught courses at Rotman. 27 of these employees ranked in the top 30 on the highest-paid list. The average salary among these 69 employees was $453,422, with the median salary being $434,003. 

Beyond the top earners, salaries for Rotman professors remain high. The 12 finance professors on the 2023 Sunshine List had an average salary of $461,687, while the 11 accounting professors averaged $427,666. For comparison, the average salary for political science professors was $201,366, and for English professors, $207,624.

Why are Rotman faculty members so well paid? In an interview with The Varsity, Finance Professor and CIT Chair in Structured Finance Laurence Booth explained that it all boils down to supply and demand. “The demand for MBAs, Masters in Finance, Masters in Risk Financial Management is very high,” he said, adding that this demand results in higher wages. 

Booth recounted that during the early 2000s, Rotman faced significant challenges in recruiting faculty who met U of T’s tenure standards. Additionally, the school struggled to compete against private firms and top US business schools, such as UCLA and the University of Michigan, for faculty members. “The reason was… we were paying half the salaries of our US peer group with twice the teaching load,” Booth explained. 

The solution? Dramatically increase salaries to attract higher-quality faculty members who can achieve tenure and make Rotman a more competitive business school.

“If you want a school competing with Michigan, UCLA, and North Carolina, you have to hire the faculty that are equivalent in quality to produce students that are equivalent in quality,” Booth said.

From 2000 to 2023, finance professors and accounting professors’ wages increased by 216.6 per cent and 169.1 per cent respectively. On the contrary, political science and English professors saw their wages increase by 80.8 per cent and 84.4 per cent in the same time frame. 

In an email to The Varsity, a spokesperson for the university explained that the school competes with top universities worldwide for faculty members. “Many of our professional Faculties also compete with employers in the private sector, where compensation is typically higher than in the post-secondary education sector. This reality can result in salaries above the usual range for a small number of faculty members,” they wrote. 

However, Booth also warned that looking at the salaries of Rotman professors on the Sunshine List may be misleading. “A lot of the salaries on the Sunshine List aren’t their regular salaries. They’re their salaries plus amounts for being a dean or for doing special things, [such as] extra services.”