It's raining money for Carol Folt

But on the whole, USC execs earned slightly less last school year, new tax documents show.

Author

Tomo Chien
May 21, 2025

Folt retires next month. (Tomo Chien)

USC President Carol Folt raked in nearly $5 million last school year, new federal tax documents show.

Folt’s $350,000 pay bump from 2023 — more than twice the median USC professor’s salary — will likely keep her in the running for the country’s highest-paid university president. The embattled administrator will retire next month.

The tax filings, shared this week by a university spokesperson, are a year old. Nonprofits like USC aren’t required to file the disclosures until 12 months after a given fiscal year.

Still, the Internal Revenue Service documents offer one of the best windows into the private university’s otherwise opaque finances.

Notably, while Folt’s compensation reached an all-time high in the latest disclosure, executive pay on the whole declined after a steep rebound from COVID-era administrative pay cuts.

As per usual, the school’s highest paid employees largely hail from the Keck School of Medicine. Those include doctors Louis Vandermolen ($4 million) and Vaughn Starnes ($3.9 million), as well as dean Carolyn Meltzer ($1.7 million) and executives Steven Shapiro ($3.3 million) and Rod Hanners ($2.3 million).

Rounding out the top 10 non-athletics list were former HR-head Felicia Washington ($1.5 million), Chief Financial Officer Erik Brink ($1.5 million), Chief Investment Officer Amy Diamond ($2 million), and General Counsel Beong-Soo Kim ($1.5 million), who will serve as the school’s interim president when Folt retires.

Football coach Lincoln Riley ($11.5 million), former basketball coach Andy Enfield ($4.7 million), and Director of Athletics Jennifer Cohen ($3.1 million), dwarfed the compensation of their academic counterparts, as is typical.

Several other findings:

  • USC continued its venerable tradition of forking over millions to consultants ($18.6 million to Deloitte).

  • Folt received “house management services” for her posh Santa Monica home.

  • As of a year ago, Riley owed the university $3.4 million on a housing loan. Former president Max Nikias (who earned close to $900,000) owed a half million, and Provost Andrew Guzman owed nearly $700,000.

You can view the full IRS Form 990 disclosure, which is not yet public, here. See filings from previous years at ProPublica.

Tomo Chien can be reached at [email protected].