Longwood pay and administration, compared
Longwood University against nine Virginia public universities: Christopher Newport, Mary Washington, Radford, Norfolk State, Virginia State, UVA-Wise, VMI, James Madison, and William & Mary.
An independent analysis of public records, not an official publication of Longwood University. Figures are annual pay rates as of each snapshot date and may contain errors.
Faculty pay
Longwood's FY2026 median is the lowest of the ten schools for professors ($96,489) and the lowest for associate professors ($81,850), and eighth for assistant professors ($70,000). Each is 13 to 17% below the median of the nine peers. From FY2023 to FY2026 Longwood's professor median rose 5.2%, the smallest increase of the ten, and its assistant professor median rose 0.3%.
Median annual pay rate by rank
Table
Presidents
Longwood's president is fourth-highest of the ten at $530,000 in FY2026: $202,493 in state salary set by the budget act, plus a $327,507 supplement the board of visitors approves from private gifts, endowment, or foundation funds. That is up 12.8% since FY2023. Only William & Mary, James Madison, and Virginia State pay more.
President's annual pay rate (state salary plus board-approved supplement)
Table
Upper-level administrators
Counted from position titles in four tiers: president, provost, vice presidents and chief of staff; associate and assistant vice presidents and provosts; deans; and associate and assistant deans. Longwood had 34 upper-level administrative positions in FY2026 (33 in FY2023) against 245 ranked faculty, or 13.9 per 100 faculty. That ranks second of the seven schools whose titles can be counted, behind William & Mary (18.5) and ahead of Mary Washington (11.5), Virginia State (10.3), Norfolk State (8.6), James Madison (8.5), and VMI (5.1).
Upper-level administrators per 100 ranked faculty, FY2026
Table
Upper-level administrators over time (president through assistant dean)
Table
Christopher Newport, Radford, and UVA-Wise are left out of the administrator counts. Christopher Newport and Radford report most administrators under a job code instead of a title, and UVA-Wise moved its senior staff to generic titles in FY2025, so their administrators cannot be identified. With only four snapshots across three years, a change of one or two positions can be a title edit rather than a new job.
How far to trust this
These are pay rates on a given date, so medians move with hiring, promotion, and departures as well as raises. Rates include 12-month contracts, which puts medians above the federal IPEDS averages (which convert to a 9-month basis) while keeping the same order of schools. At Longwood, the rate also includes stipends for department chairs, program directors, and similar roles, so faculty holding those roles show more than their rank alone pays, and it does not include summer salary; whether the other schools fold such stipends into the rate has not been confirmed. William & Mary and James Madison have law, business, and doctoral programs that raise their medians. Administrator counts depend on how each school writes titles; every matched title was read, but a school that titles a VP-level job differently would be undercounted.
Data sources
State salary tables. The Virginia Department of Accounts keeps a statewide table of every salaried state employee: name, position title, job code, and state, non-state, and special pay rates. Four releases were used: FY2023 (released October 2023), January 30, 2024, and FY2025 and FY2026 (released February 2026). Student workers and hourly wage employees are not in these tables.
Public-records requests. The tables were obtained under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, which requires public bodies to release employees' names, positions, and salaries (Code of Virginia § 2.2-3705.1), through requests filed on MuckRock: State of Virginia Salaries 2023, State of Virginia Salaries 2024, and State of Virginia Salaries 2025 & 2026.
Presidents' salaries. State salaries for presidents, and the authority for boards of visitors to supplement them, are set in the budget act, Item 4-6.01.
Cross-check. Medians by rank were compared against the U.S. Department of Education's IPEDS instructional staff salary survey for 2023-24.