Money U.

Rest assured, taxpayers and parents of college-bound kids, your tax dollars likely will not be required to bail out universities generally and their fat-cat CEOs specifically. Your rising tuition bills (OK, and some of your tax money in the case of public schools) help ensure that the bottom line – the universities’ and their presidents’ – is more heavily padded than an NFL linebacker. Median annual pay for college presidents last school year, when the economy was lurching into a downturn, increased 7.6 percent to $427,000, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The University of Virginia’s John T. Casteen III ranked third nationwide among highest-paid public university bosses with an annual haul of $797,048. Good thing all that tuition money parents shell out for their kids and their kids’ school presidents translates to instant jobs in today’s market.