The University of Florida has the most employees among the state’s 12 public universities, thanks to its medical facilities and service to agriculture.

The data are from the Board of Governors, which oversees all 12 institutions and their individual boards of trustees. These numbers are generally updated twice a year. This data is for spring 2024.

Athletics

The numbers for UF would be even higher if athletics were included. Both UF and the University of Central Florida are legally allowed to exempt athletic personnel from the state’s database.

Among universities that include athletic personnel in the database, practices are inconsistent. For example:

  • Florida State University includes some high-ranking personnel, but none of its highest paid coaches.

  • University of South Florida reports only $500,000 of the coach’s $2.5 million salary.

  • Florida International University includes the full salary for its football coach.

Funding Source

Intercollegiate Athletics is one of 13 funds used to pay state university employees. As with athletics, practice varies widely by institution. For example, College of Engineering and Faculty Practice funds are found only at Florida State while IFAS (agriculture) is only at UF.

Rank Fund Employees
1 Education and General 46,075
2 Contracts and Grants 30,904
3 Auxiliary 11,767
4 Health Or Medical Center 5,426
5 IFAS 2,297
6 Intercollegiate Athletics 798
7 Student Activity 634
8 College of Engineering 159
9 Faculty Practice 75
10 Technology Fee 65
11 Student Financial Aid 56
12 Concession Funds 23
13 Board Approved Fees 13

UF Employees

The state database lists employees by each fund used for their salary. Some educators are paid from two or more funds. Therefore, to obtain total salary for each employee, their funding sources were combined in the following table. People who shared a name and title were separated according to their work, as best as could be determined from public records, including UF salary lists by department.

UF Top 10 Salaries

Following is a list of the 10 highest-paid individuals in the state database. Because UF exempts athletics, this list does not include coaches, such as head football coach Billy Napier, paid $7.4 million in 2024 per USA Today.

Eight of the 10 are with UF Health, and seven of those are surgeons. The other two were, at the time the data were released, the current president (Ben Sasse) and a former president (W. Kent Fuchs).

Name Position Salary
Mark Bleiweis Professor $2,084,929
Tomas Martin Professor $1,319,161
Brian Hoh Professor $1,255,272
David Nelson Professor $1,183,908
Benjamin Sasse President $1,114,833
Daryoush Tavanaiepour Associate Professor $1,102,507
Thomas Beaver Professor $1,055,731
Thiago Beduschi Professor $1,049,032
Wesley Fuchs Professor $1,011,244
Isaac Mitchell Med Dir & UF Health Physician $997,483

Low-Paid Positions

At the other end of the scale, finding the lowest-paid employees is challenging, in part because the data may be incomplete.

For example, at the bottom are five people paid $169 a year. Each is a professor of some type. Yet only 0.01 (FTE) full-time equivalent of their wage is in the public data. The remaining 99 percent of their pay is omitted.

A full-time employee paid the Florida minimum wage (in 2024) of $13.00 an hour would be paid $27,040 a year. Yet 18 staffers are listed as being paid less than that amount, even though they also are listed as full-time.

Therefore, instead of individuals, positions were evaluated. The following list is of the 10 lowest-paid positions, on average. Only full-timers were counted, and only positions with at least 10 employees were listed.

Position Count MeanPay
Laboratory Courier I 10 $27,040
Groundskeeper I 32 $27,155
Custodial Worker I 256 $27,711
Animal Care Technician I 50 $27,991
Library Assistant Ii 14 $29,121
Asset Specialist I 10 $29,353
Agricultural Assistant I 58 $30,733
Laboratory Technician I 29 $31,084
Fiscal Assistant I 13 $31,277
Customer Service Rep 14 $31,359

Quintile Analysis

The impact of medical salaries at UF can be illustrated by quintile analysis.

All UF employees paid at least $100,000 were grouped into 5 bins, ranked by salary. There are 4,770 UF employees in six figures, or 954 in each quintile. The graph shows that those in the upper 20 percent dwarf employees in the other four quintiles.

However, the scale is distorted by the highest-paid employee. At roughly $2.1 million, the top earner was paid $766,000 more than No. 2. If the more typical highest wage of $1.3 million were the top, the increase over the next quartile would still be large but less dramatic.

All Universities, Top 1,000

UF’s impact on high-end salaries for all universities can be seen in the following table and chart. The table added pay across all fund sources for each employee. People who shared a name and title at UF were separated according to their work.


UF’s footprint can be seen in the following chart. UF, which excludes athletics, has three times as many higher-paid employees as the other 11 universities combined.

Story Ideas

  1. What is the source of the 99% of salary money for the 5 professors paid $169?

  2. Why are some full-time UF employees paid less than the state minimum wage?

  3. Why are UF positions that support animals and families paid less than $15 an hour?

  4. How does FSU determine which athletic employees are funded through the state, and what other fund sources are used?