(MONEY Magazine) – Banker John Reed, in creating a new board of directors for the New York Stock Exchange after ousted chairman Dick Grasso's $188 million pay scandal, says he "avoided people who had been highly compensated." Uh, compared with whom? Shirley Ann Jackson of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is the country's highest-paid university president, with $891,400 in total compensation in 2002, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. Herbert Allison Jr., chief of corporate-governance nag TIAA-CREF, will earn $8 million in 2003--35% more than his predecessor did in 2002. And after Pharmacia took over Monsanto in 2000, departing chairman Robert Shapiro took home $14 million in booty, plus juicy retirement perks like a $40,000-a-month consulting gig and payments for office space, transportation and personal security. --LISA GIBBS