California State University’s trustees will vote Wednesday on whether to increase how much the system’s 22 campus presidents and other senior executives earn, potentially paving the way for up to 15% in annual incentive-based raises paid for by philanthropic funds and base salaries that reflect how much presidents at similar universities earn.
Exact numbers aren’t available; those will be revealed during Wednesday morning’s board meeting. Committee members will discuss the matter and decide on whether to advance the idea during a scheduled vote before noon. The full board will vote on the measure in the afternoon. The plan will kick in the next year or two. No executives will receive raises under the proposed plan this year.
Several hundred unionized staff and faculty rallied outside the board of trustees meeting today, raging against the proposed executive raises at a time of budget austerity, layoffs and program cuts.
“I am mad,” said Erin Foote, a union board member for California State Employees Union, during the rally. The union represents 35,000 office and student workers. The union is in a dispute with the system over additional raises.
“We are going to knock the doors of our legislators so hard there will be holes in them until they stand with us in their budget negotiations,” she said, vowing to organize for a governor who’d replace Cal State’s chancellor and appoint more union-friendly trustees.
Average base pay for campus presidents currently is $453,000, ranging from $370,000 to more than $500,000, system data show.
Under the compensation plan, raises to executive base pay would be part of overall wage increases for Cal State workers. That’s in addition to the 15% incentive-based bump to base pay executives would be eligible for.
The criteria for receiving the 15% increases hasn’t been finalized, said the system’s interim chief financial officer, Patrick Lenz, in an interview last week. The chancellor’s office will need a year or two to work on that, he said.
The plan would depart from Cal State’s previous standard of capping base pay of presidents at a salary that’s no more than 10% above what their predecessors made. That plan, last updated 18 months ago, “inappropriately prevents the CSU from offering competitive compensation” to presidents who can lead large universities, the chancellor's office staff wrote for the board meeting agenda item.
Higher education landscape in turmoil
The overhaul comes at a time when the system is hurting for cash and also is contending with epochal challenges to higher education as the Trump administration seeks to claw back billions in funding to universities and challenge long-held academic freedoms at campuses.
Last month, Cal State pushed through initial hesitation to seek a $144 million zero-interest loan from California lawmakers, a financing deal the Legislature permitted to compensate for an equally sized cut to the system’s state support this year. System leaders say they want to use the money to offer one-time bonuses to unionized workers and other staff, including senior executives. Union members want ongoing raises that also support expanded benefits.
And Cal State is expecting smaller increases in state support than lawmakers initially signaled. The Legislature intends to increase state spending for Cal State in 2026-27 by just $101 million — far lower than previous promises from Gov. Gavin Newsom of about $250 million.
That’s upset some system trustee members, who say they OK’d raises for workers — many who went on strike for higher pay — and other spending increases based on those promises.
Cal State explains need for plan
In explaining the increased executive compensation proposal, a senior Cal State official said few individuals have the experience and skill set to run campuses with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We want people in these positions who will ensure that a campus’ fiscal condition is spot on, that they're trying to meet enrollment challenges, that they're dealing with the overwhelming fact that the state's going to be hard pressed to invest in higher education over the next couple of years, and the federal government is decimating us,” Lenz said. “These are the people that we need to come in and help us get through these really tough times.”
Cal State in the past four years increased staff and faculty pay by 17%, chief human resources officer Frank Hurtarte told CalMatters last week. He said campus presidents saw a 7% raise in that time span.
The faculty union calculates that presidential pay has grown 81% in the past two decades, even as inflation grew 63%.
While typical executive pay is several times what it is for faculty and staff, the vast majority of the system’s spending goes toward pay for workers who aren’t executives — $5.6 billion, or 73% of the system’s budget, wrote Jason Maymon, a Cal State spokesperson, in an email.
Executives — the systemwide chancellor, campus presidents and vice chancellors in the central office — collectively earn $18 million, or 0.25% of the Cal State operating budget, Maymon wrote when asked. That’s about as much as the chancellor’s office cut from its budget this year, part of a systemwide effort to slash costs, including letting go of some lecturers.
Hurtarte pointed out that nationally about 30% to 40% of campus presidents left their jobs in the past 24 months. Cal State has six campuses with president vacancies, he noted. There’s both a lot of churn in the campus presidential job market and competition to fill vacancies.
Margarita Berta-Ávila, president of the California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 members, said in an interview that the executives have mismanaged state and tuition money and don’t deserve raises anyway. Some faculty don’t earn enough to afford rent in expensive cities, she said.
“It's unconscionable that they're even talking about [the raises] when you got people living in cars,” she said.
She’s also upset that leadership at Cal State Los Angeles shared faculty names and other personal information with the federal government as part of an investigation into alleged antisemitism. The union has sued the Cal State board of trustees.
Pay plan details
Executive compensation under the proposed plan would have four components: base pay, standard executive health and retirement benefits plus housing and car perks for presidents, a new deferred compensation plan and the possibility of the annual pay rising by as much as 15% after a performance review.
While the base pay, like much of Cal State’s budget, would be paid with tuition and state revenue, the extra 15% would be funded with campus philanthropic efforts. The universities each have fundraising arms, and they’d be expected to raise the money to supplement presidents’ pay, Lenz said.
That fundraising money also will go toward the new deferred compensation program, basically an additional retirement account for executives at nonprofit or governmental organizations, such as universities.
Cal State wouldn’t be alone in paying campus leaders with private funds. At the University of California, several campus heads, called chancellors, have a portion of their salaries paid with outside funds.
“Compensation decisions must also be fiscally prudent, align with the CSU’s public mission and be made within the constraints of available funding and budget priorities,” the agenda item says.
Under this plan, the systemwide chancellor will propose raises each November for board approval.
The new compensation plan seeks to better attract and retain campus presidents by offering new presidents and other executives a base salary that reflects what peer universities pay and the skills the candidate brings. Those peer institutions include the public college and university systems in New York, Texas State University and the UC, Maymon wrote.
Under the current policy, raises for incumbents are no higher than 10%. They kick in only after a satisfactory employee review and an analysis of whether the executive was underpaid relative to other presidents across the country. This approach “constrains competitiveness and adds administrative burden,” the agenda item says. The 10% cap for incumbents would also sunset in favor of the eligibility for annual 15% incentive pay.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
