Student-to-employee ratio

Among Florida public universities, the University of Central Florida holds the most students at nearly 60,000 enrolled as of Fall 2024, according to the state’s Board of Governors.

However, UCF doesn’t hold dominance among number of employees. It ranks fourth among Florida schools, falling behind the University of Florida, University of South Florida and Florida State University.

As a result, UCF has the highest student-to-employee ratio in the state at a little over nine students per one employee. This figure includes all employees, including those in job positions like research and maintenance.

Employee data also comes from the Board of Governors, which operates a Right to Know website updated twice per year listing employment data for all 12 public universities. The following chart, along with all analyses in this publication, does not include graduate students. They were removed from the data to account for the fact they are not all listed by name.

This data is from Fall 2024.

Student-to-instructor ratio

The Board uses a 12-category system to structure job types. Three of those categories fall under the “instructional/research faculty” group.

1. Temporary instruction/research personnel are typically student staff like teaching or research assistants in graduate school.

2. Full-time instruction/research personnel are fully credentialed full time teaching and research positions. These people work more with students than administration.

3. Faculty administrators are full-time faculty who serve in positions like chairs or directors within their departments.

Counting for only those employees who fall under one of these three categories, UCF again ranks first in the state with about a 28-to-one ratio of instructional or research faculty to students.

UCF employees

The data lists employees in separate entries for each fund used for their salary. Funding sources among employees with more than one source were combined in the following table.

People who shared a name, title and job category were separated as best as could be determined. James Brown and Timothy Brown are therefore distinguished with a “1” or “2” appended to the end of their names in the following table. UCF provides no publicly available salary data or directory of faculty names, so these individuals could not be identified by department.

The data does not include athletic personnel including coaches. Football coach Gus Malzahn’s current contract is for $5 million in 2025 and $5.5 million the following two years, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

The highest-paid UCF employee is Deborah German, the founding dean for the school’s College of Medicine.

The top 10 highest-paid employees come from the colleges of medicine, computer science, computer vision and business, as well as the Office of the President.

German is a notable outliar among UCF employee salaries, exceeding the next-highest paid employee by about $350,000 in annual compensation.

Presidential salaries

The UCF president, Alexander Cartwright, earned the lowest annual compensation among Florida universities for Fall 2024. However, according to public records, about 80% of his salary is deferred every year.

A deferred salary means part of the employee’s wages are paid out at a later date, usually at retirement.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Cartwright earned about $1.1 million in 2023 — a significantly higher figure than the $400,000 reported by the Board for his Fall 2024 annual salary.

Among the Florida universities reporting presidential salaries to the Chronicle, UCF ranks third. UF reported salaries for two presidents — Ben Sasse and Wesley Kent Fuchs — in 2023, considering Sasse took office in February of that year.

Pay variation by job type

Unsurprisingly, of those Board-designated job categories mentioned earlier, the ones with lowest average wages across all employees also tend to be the ones with the smallest variation. (Job categories have been rephrased for clarity.)

Generally speaking, the salary range for lower-paying jobs tends to be narrower. These roles have less room for negotiation and salary increases based on factors like experience and performance. They might also be tied to minimum wage laws and other salary regulation mechanisms.

In addition to the instruction/research categories stated previously, further categories are listed below along with their official Board-designated title and examples of roles in each:

  1. Higher executive (Upper level executive)
    1. President, provost, vice president
  2. Lower executive (Lower level executive)
    1. Assistant and associate vice president, deans
  3. Higher admin (Higher level managerial)
    1. Directors
  4. Lower admin (Lower level managerial)
    1. Mid-level managers, assistant and associate directors
  5. Coordinator (Professionalized occupation)
    1. Coordinators, academic advisors and counselors
  6. Professional
    1. Practicing lawyers, general counsels, executive consultants, K-12 teachers and administrators, librarians, doctors, healthcare experts mental health professionals, accountants
  7. Support staff supervisor (Core operational supervisor)
    1. First-line supervisors of positions like clerks, groundskeepers, custodians, secretaries, program assistants
  8. Technical/para professional (Specialized technical/para professional)
    1. Safety officers, police officers, healthcare workers, science and research technicians
  9. Support staff (Core operational and support staff)
    1. Clerks, groundskeepers, custodians, secretaries, program assistants

Article ideas

  1. Why does the UCF president only receive 20% of his salary each year and defer the remainder — was it his personal preference or a university-driven policy?

  2. Does UCF’s low number of instructional and research faculty reflect a robust online program? Do these courses require less faculty or allow for larger (virtual) class sizes?