The US universities offering the most generous professor salaries

These 20 institutions compensate full-time professors and lecturers an average of 230,000 USD or more annually, with Princeton University leading the list.

Last month, Insurance Dimes, a data-driven research and analysis platform, compiled a list of US universities offering the highest salaries to their professors and lecturers.

This data reflects the average full-time 12-month salaries for the 2024-2025 academic year, sourced from the College Scorecard, a university evaluation tool provided by the US Department of Education.

The top 20 institutions pay their teaching staff an average of at least 231,000 USD annually. Princeton University leads this list with an average salary of 304,300 USD. This amount is nearly three times the national average for all university teaching positions, which stands at approximately 117,000 USD, according to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

The 20 US universities with the highest professor and lecturer salaries are:

Rank	Institution	Average Annual Salary (USD)
1	Princeton University	304.300
2	Stanford University	302.400
3	Harvard University	300.600
4	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	290.100
5	California Institute of Technology (CalTech)	287.900
6	Rockefeller University	274.500
7	University of California-Los Angeles	274.200
8	Yale University	271.100
9	University of Pennsylvania	265.400
10	Columbia University	258.200
11	University of California-Berkeley	255.000
12	Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia	252.300
13	University of California-Santa Barbara	248.100
14	Babson College	247.400
15	Northwestern University	243.900
16	Spertus Institute	242.000
17	University of Chicago	237.700
18	Dartmouth College	237.200
19	Elmezzi Graduate School of Molecular Medicine	231.500
20	University of California-Irvine	231.000

Geographically, university lecturers and professors in California receive the highest average salaries, reaching 143,400 USD annually, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Meanwhile, teaching staff at private universities in New Jersey earn the most, with an average of 149,500 USD.

By field, professors and lecturers in health and engineering disciplines lead in compensation, earning 127,000 USD and 122,000 USD annually, respectively. In contrast, those in education and library science fields receive significantly less, averaging 80,000 USD, according to NCES.