UC chancellors get big raises, putting them between $785,000 and nearly $1.2 million

A person walks down a pathway at UC Irvine.

Sept. 20, 2024 3 AM PT

University of California chancellors will get big salary boosts — near or exceeding 30% in most cases — as the Board of Regents agreed Thursday that higher pay was needed to bring leaders of the nation’s top public university system closer to what their peers earn.

The increases, which will be paid through private sources rather than tuition dollars or state funding, are effective this month and will vary by campus. They will bring annual chancellor salaries to: $785,000 at Merced; $795,000 at Santa Cruz; $810,000 at Riverside; $820,000 at Santa Barbara; $895,000 at Davis and Irvine; and nearly $1.2 million at San Francisco. Private funds already subsidize some of the chancellors’ pay at San Francisco and Davis.

UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Cynthia Larive will voluntarily forgo her base salary increase for 2024-25.

Currently the UC chancellors’ salaries stand at about the 32nd percentile of the average pay of comparable university leaders nationwide. The raise elevates them to the 48th percentile.

New chancellors at UCLA and UC Berkeley, who were hired this year at the highest pay levels among all but one of the undergraduate campus leaders, did not receive salary adjustments. UCLA’s Julio Frenk will earn $978,904 when he takes the helm in January and UC Berkeley’s Rich Lyons receives $946,450 plus $220,000 in private funds.

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla also did not get a salary adjustment, as he was given a $500,000 increase last year — funds raised by private donors — to bring his annual pay to $1.14 million. Regents approved the raise to prevent him from accepting the presidency of an unnamed, private out-of-state school.

By comparison, the public university president with the highest annual base pay is Jay Hartzell at the University of Texas at Austin, who earns $1.4 million, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Andrew Hamilton at New York University tops the list of private university presidents with an annual base pay of $3.3 million.

“The chancellors who lead UC’s ten campuses, each a top-ranked university in its own right, are renowned scholars and administrative leaders with significant responsibility for ensuring instructional, research, and operational excellence and continually advancing UC’s service to the public,” said a memo from the UC Office of the President. “Although UC campuses consistently rank among the best in the U.S. and the world, UC chancellors are among the lowest-paid compared to their peers nationwide.”

Regents also approved salary adjustments for six senior UC leaders, including a 25.3% boost for UC President Michael V. Drake to bring his annual base pay to $1.3 million. In addition, 27 senior managers, including Drake and chancellors, will receive a 4.2% general increase.

Regent John A. Pérez said he was “very uncomfortable with the overreliance” on a salary survey data compilation known as the Market Reference Zone used to make decisions about UC salaries. He said UC uses that comparative tool only for the system’s highest-paid leaders and doesn’t evaluate lower-paid employees in the same way. Board Chair Janet Reilly said she would convene a task force to review compensation issues.

Bleak budget outlook

On other issues, UC Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom laid out a bleak budget picture for 2025-26, when the university may need to weather a state funding cut of 7.95%. UC is projecting an overall state funding decline of about $270 million for that fiscal year.

Among possible ways to raise more funds, he said, would be to increase supplemental tuition for out-of-state and international students beyond the one-time increase paid by each incoming class of California residents.

Another idea, Brostrom said, would be to give individual campuses a range of potential nonresident tuition increases they could impose. Former UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ, in an interview with The Times before stepping down in June, had advocated for the freedom of campuses to set their own nonresident tuition rates.

Regents said they would be open to considering such a plan, but a few expressed caution about breaking away from the current systemwide tuition levels.

Campus police to get more weapons

The board also approved requests by UC police to purchase more military equipment. UCLA police, who were called on to handle some of the nation’s largest campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war last spring, won approval to double their stockpile of pepper balls and sponge rounds, obtain eight more projectile launchers and purchase three new drones.

All California law enforcement agencies are required by state law to report annually on the acquisition and use of weapons characterized as “military equipment.” A UC spokesman called the police requests a “routine agenda item” not tied to protests or other particular incidents.

“All of the campus’s requests are for non-lethal alternatives to standard-issue firearms, enabling officers to de-escalate situations and respond without the use of deadly force,” UC spokesman Stett Holbrook said in a statement. “The requested items are essential for maintaining operational readiness, supporting ongoing training programs, and above all, ensuring public safety.”

Opponents of the weapons request briefly shut down the meeting at UCLA on Thursday, but regents moved to another room and voted approval.

The report reviewed by regents said UC weapons were primarily used for training during calendar year 2023, the time frame examined. The use of weapons during the spring protests will be reported next year.

But several UCLA faculty members and students have spoken out against the requests for more weapons, saying they were wrongfully used against peaceful protesters earlier this year. Robin D.G. Kelley, a UCLA professor of American history, spent the night in the hospital with his student who was shot in the chest with a projectile during a June 10 protest. The student, hospitalized for two days, suffered a contusion to the heart and a bruised lung and remains so traumatized that they have postponed law school studies, Kelley said.

A UCLA police report on the June 10 incident said an officer did fire a sponge projectile into the “center mass area” of a demonstrator’s body, asserting he was trying to stop the person from “reaching for another police officer’s duty belt, where they carried their duty firearm.”

The report also said that two officers fired about 240 “chemical agent projectiles” at the ground in front of protesters that evening, deploying clouds of pepper powder. An independent review of the June 10 incident has been ordered.

Critics said their experience with police during the demonstrations raised myriad questions.

The UC board memo on the issue said that use of the equipment last year drew no complaints and did not result in any violations of university policy. No UC campus receives surplus military equipment from the U.S. Department of Defense, the memo said.

UCLA police requested up to 3,000 more pepper balls to add to their inventory of 1,600; up to 400 more sponge and foam rounds, double the current stockpile of 200; eight more projectile launchers and three new drones.