UH president’s salary on lower end, report finds

University of Hawaii President David Lassner’s six-figure salary last year ranked at the low end of pay for public university leaders, according to a new report released Tuesday night by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Lassner’s $375,000 base salary is ranked No. 159 out of 239 leaders of public colleges and university systems. His salary is in the 38th percentile, meaning 62 percent of public university presidents earned more than he did for the 2015-16 academic year.

The Chronicle said its salary analysis included all public doctoral universities and all state college and university systems with at least three campuses and 50,000 students.

The average total compensation for public college presidents was $501,398 in fiscal 2016, with pay up 5.3 percent from the prior year, the report said. In last year’s report Lassner’s salary was ranked No. 152 out of 260 executives.

Full-year base salaries ranged from a high of $1.2 million for the chancellor of the University of Texas system, which enrolls 221,000 students, to a low of $168,209 for the chancellor of the Ohio Department of Higher Education, which oversees the state’s two- and four-year institutions.

Lassner had been the University of Hawaii’s longtime information technology officer before being named president in 2014, after serving as interim president for nearly a year. He leads a 10-campus system with more than 55,000 students, 10,000 faculty and staff, and $1.5 billion in annual operating expenses.

Lassner’s pay is tied on the list with the base pay for the president of the University of Louisiana system, which enrolls more than 90,000 students.

The Chronicle also compared executive pay among “similar institutions,” which the report said uses factors including Carnegie classification, endowment value, expenditures, admissions rate, enrollment and median SAT score. Among the eight institutions the report compared UH with, Lassner’s salary ranked higher than two.

While the report found the average total compensation for public college presidents increased by roughly 5 percent from the year before, Lassner’s base salary has been unchanged since his July 1, 2014, appointment. Despite receiving high marks on his annual performance evaluations from the UH Board of Regents, Lassner has declined performance-based increases since taking office.

He’s also since taken on the job of leading the UH-Manoa campus with no additional compensation.

In August the board approved Lassner’s recom­mendation that he simulta­­neously serve as interim chancellor of the flagship Manoa campus while a search for a permanent chancellor continued. In February he recommended suspending the chancellor search for two years following an unsuccessful nationwide search, and offered to continue serving as chancellor.

“This is not about money for me. I am honored to have this amazing opportunity to serve the university that has been my home for nearly 40 years,” Lassner said in an emailed statement. “We have made tremendous progress over these past few years and there is even more our team will do to advance UH to better serve our students and the entire state over the years ahead.”

By comparison, Lassner’s predecessor, M.R.C. Greenwood, received a $475,000 salary at her hiring in 2009. Former UH-Manoa Chancellor Tom Apple, hired in 2012, was paid $439,008 as chancellor.