Elizabeth Warren Professor Salary: What She Earned at Harvard

Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been representing Massachusetts in Congress since 2013, previously worked as a law professor at Harvard University.

According to her bio on Harvard’s website, Sen. Warren specialized in topics including bankruptcy law, contracts and health care law. The school praises her as “one of the nation’s top experts on bankruptcy and the financial pressures facing middle-class families” and adds that she has earned multiple awards for excellence in teaching.

As a candidate in the Democratic primary race, Sen. Warren’s teaching background, and especially her salary at Harvard, has been of interest to voters, based on Google search trends.

Here’s what you need to know about Elizabeth Warren’s professor salary.

---

Elizabeth Warren Earned More Than $400,000 from Harvard Between 2010 & 2011

In January of 2012, as she was running for the Senate, Elizabeth Warren submitted her financial disclosure form to the Senate Office of Public Records.

The form stated that during 2010 and 2011, Warren earned $429,981 from Harvard University. It lists her position simply as “Faculty.” You can see the entire form on the Senate website here.

The form includes that Warren served on the editorial board of Aspen Publishers. Warren, who is the author of at least 11 books, noted that she received more than $136,000 during this time period in royalties, in addition to an $8,000 salary for serving on the board.

Warren also included that she was paid $90,000 to consult for Kenny Nachwalter PA, a business litigation law firm in Miami.

An additional financial disclosure report was filed a few months later. It stated that as of May of 2012, Warren had earned $93,775 from Harvard.

For more on Elizabeth Warren’s total net worth and tax returns, click here.

---

Part of Elizabeth Warren’s Harvard Salary May Have Come in the Form of Certain Allowances

Elizabeth Warren began teaching at Harvard Law School in 1995. The student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, has often reported on professor and administrator salaries over the years.

A 1998 article pointed out that top university investors were earning record bonuses and salaries. The article cited data from the Harvard Management Company, which invests Harvard’s endowment.

The reporter cited the fact that Fund Manager Jonathan S. Jacobson was paid more than $10 million in 1998. The president of the Harvard Management Company, Jack Meyer, earned $1.8 million.

The article does not mention Elizabeth Warren by name. But Heavy found a separate web page, hosted by the student-run Harvard Computer Society, that included a graph that matches the information about those top earners.

The graph, which you can see here, lists Elizabeth Warren as being one of the top earners at Harvard. Her salary was listed as $192,550. She received an additional $133,453 in “‘other compensation’ (included faculty mortgage subsidy, and housing allowance).”

---

Elizabeth Warren Has Proposed Eliminating the Majority of the Nation’s Student Loan Debt

Senator Elizabeth Warren is known among the Democratic primary candidates for having a policy plan for just about everything. One of those proposals is to forgive most student loans. According to the Center for American Progress, approximately 43 million U.S. adults owe a combined $1.5 trillion in student debt.

Sen. Warren proposes eliminating a majority of that debt. Her plan is to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with a household income of less than $100,000. People earning between $100,000 and $250,000 will have a smaller portion of their debt forgiven, on a sliding scale. There is no debt forgiveness for people earning more than $250,000.

Sen. Warren has received criticism from opponents on the other side of the aisle on this topic. The National Republican Senatorial Committee slammed Warren in 2016 for pushing for more affordable college when she earned such a large salary at Harvard. The NRSC wrote that year that the high salaries and consulting fees Warren and another senator had earned as professors “could have gone a long way in helping the students they are now conveniently pretending to care about during campaign season.”

READ NEXT: Pete Buttigieg’s Student Debt Amounts to at Least $140,000