Chancellor’s Salary
The announcement of the new Chancellor’s salary evoked great outrage in UC Davis students. A salary of $400,000 plus benefits and a relocation allowance would make anyone angry, especially when the price of tuition is going up. The Sacramento Bee printed the reasoning of the UC officials who decided on the salary:
UC officials said they look at 26 universities when making salary comparisons for chancellor positions. They include private universities such as Johns Hopkins, Yale and the University of Chicago, as well as public institutions such as University of Illinois at Urbana, University of Colorado and University of Texas.
They looked at universities like Yale and Johns Hopkins to decide what to pay the new Chancellor? Even the die hard Davis fans would have to admit that UC Davis cannot compete with the likes of Yale. If the Chancellor is being paid this much because Yale pays their Chancellor this much, then UC Davis should be able to compete with Yale in its level of prestige, but it does not. The idea behind hiring someone at a certain salary is that the returns will be higher than the salary lost to pay the new employee. Of course, since the UC officials are not the ones paying (the students are), hiring someone at an inflated salary is not a huge worry. Otherwise they would have increased the Chancellor’s salary when UC Davis is standing toe-to-toe with Ivy League schools before wasting their hard-earned money.