The University of California board of regents recently decided to award salary increases to its top-paid executives.
This action comes after the 10-campus system received an influx of state funds, and increased tuition for all out-of-state students as part of an agreement negotiated by Governor Jerry Brown and UC President Janet Napolitano.
Under the deal finalized in May, the university gets a 4 percent spending increase each year for the next four years, as well as $436 million towards paying down the system’s pension obligations, in exchange for a tuition freeze for in-state students.
Napolitano had threatened to raise tuition for all students unless the state provided more money for the schools.
Earlier this year, most UC faculty and administrators received 3 percent raises. At the end of July the board of regents took a separate vote to award the same raise to 15 of the most highly paid executives in the university system. New salaries of the highest earners range from $231,750 for Anne Shaw, chief of staff for the UC regents, to $991,942 for Mark Laret, chief executive of UC San Francisco’s medical center.
Back in September, the regents raised the salaries of five other UC chancellors by as much as 20 percent, saying they had been paid less than leaders at comparable institutions.
UC Student Association Chairman Kevin Sabo told the LA Times that executive pay increases are “sabotaging” student efforts to get increased funding for higher education.
“Money instead should be going to increasing class offerings and hiring more faculty so students can more easily fulfill their requirements and graduate on time,” Sabo argued.
School officials told the LA Times that most of the money for the raises would come from medical center revenues and investment gains, rather than the state funds or tuition.
Napolitano is also boosting wages for thousands of UC workers, including those who are employed through outside contractors. In the same week as the executive salary increases were made public, Napolitano announced the minimum wage for its workers would be raised from $9 to $15 an hour by 2017.
