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 In the 2011-12 fiscal year, the nation’s highest paid public university president was Graham B. Spanier, the president of Pennsylvania State University, who was forced out in November 2011 over his handling of a child sex abuse scandal involving a football coach. 
 
 According to the annual compensation report by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Spanier was paid $2.9 million in 2011-12, including $1.2 million in severance pay and $1.2 million in deferred compensation. 
 
 “The fact that Graham Spanier turns out to be the highest paid president in the country says something about the nature of compensation packages for people who leave under a cloud,” said Jack Stripling, the Chronicle reporter who worked on the survey. “Severance agreements are often very lucrative.” 
 
 Three other public university presidents also had compensation topping $1 million: Jay Gogue of Auburn University, at $2,542,865; E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State University, at $1,899,420; and Alan G. Merten of George Mason University, at $1,869,369. Mr. Merten retired from George Mason last June after 16 years as president. 
 
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 Mr. Gee, who in 2007 became the first public university president to earn more than $1 million, had a base salary last year of $830,439, the highest among the 212 chief executives included in the Chronicle report. He is known for prodigious fund-raising energy, which has brought the university more than $1.6 billion since he took the post, and for the lavish lifestyle his job supports, including a rent-free mansion with an elevator, a pool and a tennis court and flights on private jets. 
 
 Mr. Stripling said there had been a sea change in the last few years, with the rich getting richer and some pay packages exceeding not just $1 million, but $2 million. Deferred compensation agreements can increase pay drastically, as was the case with Mr. Gogue, whose pay went from $720,000 to $2.5 million in a single year when he completed a five-year contract. 
 
 But the biggest growth last year, Mr. Stripling said, was in the $600,000 to $700,000 range, a category that included 28 chief executives, up from only 13 the previous year. 
 
 According to the Chronicle report, the median total compensation for the presidents of public research universities was $441,392, up 4.7 percent from the previous year’s $421,395. The median base salary, $373,800, was up 2 percent from $366,519 the previous year. 
 
 Rounding out the top 10 earners were Jo Ann M. Gora of Ball State University ($984,647); Mary Sue Coleman of the University of Michigan system ($918,783); Charles W. Steger of Virginia Tech ($857,749); Mark G. Yudof of the University of California system ($847,149); Bernard J. Machen of the University of Florida ($834,562); and Francisco G. Cigarroa of the University of Texas system ($815,833). ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Alex Johnson 
 
 Penn State University has spent more than $92 million in the last two years on settlements and related costs in the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal — and it could still face claims from six or even more alleged victims, according to university documents published this week. 
 
 The university settled with 26 victims of Sandusky, 71, a longtime assistant to legendary head football coach Joe Paterno, for about $60 million in October 2013. Sandusky was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison in October 2012 for having abused 10 boys he met over 15 years through his charity for troubled children. 
 
 Sandusky has maintained his innocence, and he appeared in court as recently as last month seeking a new trial. 
 
 Related: Jerry Sandusky's Wife: Victims 'Were Manipulated, and They Saw Money' 
 
 In its audited financial statement for fiscal year 2015, which ended June 30, the university reported this week that it has paid or set aside a total of $92.8 million for 32 claims — including $33.2 million for related costs on top of the previously reported settlement payouts. 
 
 "Additional claims could be paid in the future," the statement said. 
 
 The university has previously disclosed in legal filings that it rejected the claims of six other alleged victims when it concluded the 2013 settlement. 
 
 It couldn't be determined Wednesday night whether those six people are the same as the six extra claimants mentioned in the financial statement. But the additional $33.2 million in financial liabilities over the two years don't appear to have been direct payments to any claimant: The university said they were for "internal investigation, legal, communications and other related costs." 
 
 The statement offered no further details. University offices are closed through the weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday. 
 
 The scandal deeply rocked Penn State and State College, Pennsylvania, where it is based. 
 
 Paterno, who previously was a revered figure representing integrity in college football, was fired amid allegations that he didn't properly report concerns about Sandusky to authorities. He died in January 2012 at age 85. 
 
 Related: Ex-Coach Jerry Sandusky Should Get His Public Pension Back: Court 
 
 University President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President Gary Schultz were all forced out of their jobs. They await trials on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and other counts, accused of having interfered with the investigation and then having lied about it to a grand jury. 
 
 A state judge this month ruled that the state must restore Sandusky's $4,900-a-month pension because he wasn't formally a state employee when he committed the crimes he was convicted of. ||||| Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer listens during the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland in 2013. The value of their median pay package for the relatively small number of women CEOs in the S&P 500 was actually higher than it was for their male peers. In a company filing, Mayer's 2015 package was valued at nearly $36 million, though her actual earned compensation for 2015 was a relatively smaller $13.9 million. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron) 
 
 The gender pay gap is a persistent phenomenon, research shows, affecting women ranging from young female college graduates to mid-career mothers to even groups of top executives. 
 
 But look at the pay packages for the small group of women who are CEOs of the largest public corporations, and you'll find something a little different: Female CEOs appear to be keeping pace--if not out-earning--their peers. 
 
 Women at the 100 largest of those companies earned an average of $22.7 million, compared to $14.9 million for the men, according to an analysis released Friday by Equilar, the executive compensation research firm. To conduct its findings, Equilar looked at the 100 largest companies by revenue that had filed their proxy statements by April 1. Of that universe, eight companies were led by women, and six of them received a pay increase in 2015, according to the analysis. 
 
 "This is pretty consistent with what we’ve seen last year as well," said Dan Marcec, Equilar's director of content. "Obviously it’s a much smaller sample size, but the top-paid females tend to be paid pretty high." 
 
 Expand the group to the broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, meanwhile, and one finds a similar trend. There are 24 current female CEOs among those 500 companies, according to data provided by S&P Capital IQ. One of them, Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub, was just named to the job in April, so she was excluded from the wider analysis. 
 
 Among the remaining 23 women, the median pay package was valued at roughly $13 million for their most recent fiscal year, according to an analysis of data from the filings. That median is actually higher than the roughly $11 million median pay package received by their male peers. The figure for the men is based on a review of the pay packages going to more than 300 CEOs in the S&P 500, an analysis conducted by ISS Corporate Solutions, a subsidiary of proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services that provides research to companies. 
 
 A few notes about the analyses: They rely on totals from the "summary compensation tables" outlined in company filings, a commonly used figure in pay comparisons which represents the value of the pay package when it is granted and assumes companies meet their performance targets, even though CEOs may not be eligible for some of the included stock grants until future years. However, changes in pension values were excluded from those figures, since the calculation doesn't reflect the active decisions boards make each year. Two of the female CEOs, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz and Campbell Soup Co. CEO Denise Morrison, lead companies that don't report their annual data during the traditional spring proxy season, so we examined their most recently reported totals. 
 
 Some pay experts were surprised by the results. "I’ll be honest, when I ran the numbers, I went in and double checked them," said Eric Hoffmann, vice president of information services at Farient Advisors, an executive pay consulting firm. "The narrative is females make less than males. While that’s true across the board, when you start to look at CEOs the dynamic changes a little bit." 
 
 The small sample size likely plays a role. With just 23 women in the group, any average is going to be skewed by especially large packages, such as Catz's, which was valued at $53.2 million for Oracle's most recent fiscal year. 
 
 Meanwhile, some research has shown that CEOs recruited from the outside get paid more than those groomed through the ranks, and female CEOs tend to be recruited from the outside more often than men. But that doesn't appear to explain the data here: While there are examples of high-profile women who were recruited to the job--such as Yahoo's Marissa Mayer, whose 2015 package was valued at nearly $36 million--the majority of the current female CEOs were appointed from the inside, with several having long careers at the companies they now lead. (It's worth noting that $36 million figure reflects accounting and SEC rules for how pay packages are valued; Mayer's actual earned compensation for 2015, Yahoo's filing states, was a relatively smaller $13.9 million because "2015 performance fell short of the rigorous annual financial goals we set.") 
 
 Pay experts say the most likely explanation for the relatively strong showing by women is that they tended to lead some of the largest companies. Annual revenues are one of the biggest drivers in executive pay, they say. Eight of the 23 executives at S&P 500 companies fall within the top 100, and 15 of the 23 fall in the top half. 
 
 At this level, gender is less likely to figure in a board's calculations, said Hoffmann. It's certainly possible that "in order to get to the CEO role, maybe these women have to be twice as smart and twice as good, and therefore they earn more," he said. But he notes that boards of big companies tend to set pay levels for CEO based on "market data and peer groups that they're targeting irrespective of gender." 
 
 That female CEOs appear to be keeping pace with--and in some cases, even exceeding--their male peers, does not mean there isn't a gender gap in the executive suite, however. A study last year by an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, for instance, found that among top executives--not only CEOs, but chief financial officers, chief operating officers, presidents and vice chairs--the median woman in the study earned 14 percent less than her male peer. Much of that gap, the study found, can be explained by women receiving less incentive pay, bonuses and stock options or grants than their male peers. 
 
 Even then, the biggest divide at the top of corporate America isn't the pay gap, but the position gap. With only 24 women running S&P 500 companies, just under 5 percent of its CEOs are women. According to the nonprofit research firm Catalyst, just 19 percent of board seats and 25 percent of senior level managers are women. In other words, it could be a long time before that sample size issue goes away. 
 
 Read also: 
 
 Only one woman was named CEO of a major company in North America in 2015 
 
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– Last year, four public university presidents boasted compensation of more than $1 million, a study finds. At the top: Graham Spanier, the former Penn State president driven out by the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal. Spanier made $2.9 million in the 2011-2012 fiscal year; part of that was his $1.2 million severance pay, the New York Times reports. "The fact that Graham Spanier turns out to be the highest paid president in the country says something about the nature of compensation packages for people who leave under a cloud," says a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, which conducted the study. Meanwhile, Jay Gogue, at Auburn University, saw compensation of $2.54 million. Ohio State's Gordon Gee earned $1.9 million—along with his rent-free mansion and private jet. George Mason's Alan Merten received $1.87 million. Compensation has soared in recent years, says the Chronicle reporter; Gogue's pay, for instance, jumped from $700,000 to $2.5 million in a year. And 28 presidents were making between $600,000 and $700,000 last year, compared to 13 the prior year. Median compensation among public research university presidents was $441,392.