Ontario University & College Salaries: Sunshine List 2025

41,816 employees, $6.54 billion in disclosed payroll, and a sector where some professors out-earn their own presidents. Here is where the money goes in Ontario higher education.

The sector in numbers

Ontario's universities and colleges put 41,816 employees on the 2025 Sunshine List, disclosing $6.54 billion in total payroll. The sector average of $156,346 sits about $29,000 above the Sunshine List's overall mean, which reflects both the concentration of senior academics and the relatively thin layer of lower-paid staff who appear on the list (the threshold is $100,000).

The 24 universities on the list average roughly $165,000 per employee. The 24 colleges average closer to $131,000. Same broad sector, different pay floors.

Universities ranked by payroll

The University of Toronto is the largest employer by a wide margin: 7,392 disclosed employees and $1.27 billion in payroll. No other institution is within $800 million of that figure. Ottawa, York, and Waterloo are the next three by total payroll, each in the $400 million range.

On average salary, Queen's edges ahead of every other large university at $174,914, slightly above U of T's $171,936 despite having roughly a fifth of the headcount. York ($170,678) and Waterloo ($167,161) follow closely.

Professors vs. presidents

The highest-paid university employee in Ontario in 2025 is Julian Birkinshaw, Dean of the Ivey Business School at Western, who earned $656,639. Second is Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a Professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at U of T, at $649,992. Western's medical school Dean, John Yoo, earned $632,706.

These are not administrators running billion-dollar institutions. They are academics with named chairs, cross-appointments, or research programs that generate external revenue. At research universities, the gap between professor and president pay can run the other way.

Business and finance academics dominate the top of the university earners list. Brian Golden (Professor of Strategic Management, $616,606), David Goldreich (Professor of Finance, $601,971), William Strange (Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy, $596,032), and Mikhail Simutin (Associate Professor of Finance, $593,666) are all U of T business school faculty. The Rotman School appears to pay its most senior professors well above most universities' presidential salaries.

Top 15 university earners (2025)

Colleges: presidents lead the list

Colleges follow a different pattern. John Tibbits of Conestoga College earned $601,684, making him the highest-paid college employee in Ontario. The next four are all college presidents: Ann Marie Vaughan at Humber ($497,880), David Agnew at Seneca ($476,498), Paul Armstrong at Mohawk ($446,166), and Gervan Fearon at George Brown ($412,582).

Unlike universities, where senior professors routinely out-earn institutional leaders, college presidents sit at the top of their payroll distributions. The average college employee on the Sunshine List earns around $131,000; the top college presidents earn three to four times that.

Top 10 college earners (2025)

The full picture

Across universities and colleges combined, 850 employees earned $300,000 or more in 2025, and 7,605 earned over $200,000. The sector is the second-largest on the Sunshine List by total payroll, behind only healthcare. You can search every institution and individual employee at ontario-sunshinelist.org.