Gregory W. Cappelli, Apollo Group
Compensation: $25.1 million
Corporate profits: NA
Stock gain/loss: +10%
Cappelli's pay shot up more than 1,400 percent last year, and it's far from clear what he did to deserve $23.5 million in stock and stock options; shares in Apollo, which owns the for-profit University of Phoenix, were up just 10 percent last year, and Cappelli isn't even the company's sole CEO. (He splits the title with Charles B. Edelstein, who received an even bigger options grant in 2008.) Stock options are supposed to give CEOs an incentive to promote long-term growth, but that clearly hasn't worked at Apollo. Since January 2008, it has underperformed the S&P 500 and most other education companies. In 2012, its stock is down 40 percent.