100 Highest-Paid Christian College And University Executives — 2026

Six of top 10 are coaches; High Point U’s Nido Qubein is top-paid president — again

Below is a list of the 100 highest paid Christian college and university executives. The information was derived from the latest available Form 990 prepared by the ministry itself.

In years past, we have included the executives on this list in our annual list of “Highly Compensated Ministry Executives,” published two weeks ago. However, as our database has grown it became obvious that we had enough data for two lists that provide more of an “apples to apples” comparison. Thus, this second list.

A word about timing: This information comes from the most recent Form 990 available from the Internal Revenue Service. For most ministries, they come from the fiscal year 2024. Many colleges have June 30 fiscal year ends, but so far no FY 2025 Form 990s are available. This timing issue means that in a few cases we are showing salaries for people who no longer work at the institution. One example: Jerry Prevo, who retired from Liberty University.

Here are a few highlights of this year’s list:

• The smallest organization on this list is Jimmy Swaggart Bible College, with revenue of less than $900,000. However, it pays its president Gabriel Swaggart more than $1 million per year.
• Baylor has the most executives on this list with 13. Chapman, Grand Canyon, and Liberty have 10 executives each. Pepperdine has 8. All other schools have seven or fewer executives on the list. This is a broader distribution than last year’s list.
• Six of the top 10 executives on this list are either coaches or (in one case) the athletic director. This number is the same as last year
• For the fourth year in a row, Nido Qubein of High Point University is the highest-paid college president. His salary is about $3.4 million, but that’s a drop from last year, when it topped $4 million.

To see last year’s list, click here.

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