Politico provides a small window into the salaries found in big time academia. An excerpt:

At least three incoming Obamademics – Cecilia Rouse, nominated for a spot on Council of Economic Advisers; Elena Kagan, Obama’s solicitor general-designate; and Energy Secretary Steven Chu – got reduced or subsidized mortgages through their schools (Princeton, Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley, respectively).

All three can continue receiving their mortgage deals if they take leaves of absence from their schools – an option that both Rouse, who earned $300,000 last year as a Princeton economics professor, and Kagan, who pulled in $437,000 as dean of the Harvard Law School, indicated they will do for at least two years.

Chu doesn’t say whether he’ll take a leave, but he reported that upon resignation, “all benefits will end, including the car allowance, reduced mortgage rate and university club membership” and that he’ll have six months to repay the mortgage.

Chu, a Nobel prize-winning Berkeley physics professor who was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, earned $412,000 last year (plus another $34,000 this year, after he was tapped to be energy secretary). But he also pulled in nearly $80,000 from board, judging and lecture fees, including a $20,000 speech in Hong Kong in late December. . .

Jane Lubchenco, Obama’s choice to run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reported receiving $150,000 for winning the 2008 Zayed International Prize for the Environment and $235,000 last year as a professor of zoology at Oregon State University.

But, perhaps the most colorful income reported by an incoming Obamademic appeared on the report of John Holdren, Obama’s choice to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Holdren – who earned $93,000 as an environmental policy professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and $174,000 as director of the environmental group the Woods Hole Research Center – picked up another $250 from an April appearance on CBS’s “The Late Show with David Letterman,” on which he advocated fast action to address climate change.