UC Board of Regents approve big raises for campus chancellors

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Unions representing University of California teachers are crying foul after the UC Board of Regents approved a package of pay raises for campus chancellors that will pay the highest compensated chancellor more than $1 million.

The salary increases all hover around 30%, with some chancellors just under that percentage and others just over it.

The Board of Regents said all the raises will be funded by private donations, with no money coming from tuition revenue or state funds. The increases will go into effect this month and push the salary range for the 10 campus chancellors between $785,000 and nearly $1.2 million.

"It feels insensitive and unfair and unethical," said Trevor Griffey, the vice president of legislation for the University Council-American Federation of Teachers, which has struggled over the years to get substantial pay increases from the board of regents for its members.

"It really seems like kind of unnecessary especially when you're preaching a gospel of belt-tightening to those who are kind of making the university work," Griffey added.

But some experts on executive compensation are not surprised to see the salary increases.

"A million dollars - that's a lot of money and it is," said Lawrence Cunningham, the director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. "On the other hand, that's what leaders of large institutions like this today are getting."

Cunningham says even though the salary numbers may sound excessively high, they seem to be in line with other major universities and that the regents may have felt it was necessary to keep talent at that level.

"That's an independent body whose job is to act in the best interests of the university system," he told Eyewitness News. "They may just have to pay a little more in order to at attract and retain the quality of people they want to lead the institution."

The UC system is facing a substantial drop in funding next year that is expected to be around $270 million.