WEBSTER GROVES — Webster University gave its former chancellor $600,000 in severance pay as part of her agreement to retire from the private institution.
Dr. Beth Stroble, chancellor of Webster University. Photo courtesy of Webster University.
Chancellor Beth Stroble — who stepped down amid the school’s financial crisis — received two separate payments of $300,000 in September 2024 and spring 2025, according to Webster’s latest tax documents.
In return, Stroble forfeited $631,033 in supplemental retirement benefits.
Stroble came to the university in 2009 as president and was named chancellor in 2019. She was among the highest-paid university leaders in the region even as Webster lost more than $100 million and enrollment plunged to historic lows.
Webster announced in the fall of 2023 that Stroble would resign after a series of Post-Dispatch reports on the university’s financial troubles. The organization named her successor, Tim Keane, last summer.
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University officials said the school was beginning a turnaround as enrollment was improving and Webster was taking steps to fortify its finances: It sold Stroble’s former house for $1.2 million, transitioned its military campuses to online instruction and closed its Ghana campus and several other U.S. campuses, among other moves.
Webster also persuaded the courts to allow it to tap restricted donor funds.
It ended fiscal year 2024 with a $23.4 million deficit, a 40% decrease from the prior year in which it had a $38.9 million deficit, according to a financial audit.
Tax documents show Stroble made $1.1 million in her last year as chancellor.
But the university said late Thursday that that figure did not include “forfeiture of certain retirement benefits.â€
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