Paychecks, then perks and perks

Friday, Dec. 21, 2007 | 7:24 a.m.

Besides the pay, they get the perks.

Take Stephen Wells, president of the Desert Research Institute, whose job pays $272,412 this year. He also gets an $8,000 car allowance. And a $24,000 housing allowance. And $7,180 for memberships at the Las Vegas Country Club and Reno Prospectors' Club.

All presidents in the Nevada System of Higher Education get money for vehicles and homes. The automobile allowance is consistent, at $8,000 a year. The housing allowance, on the other hand, varies. Community college presidents get $12,000, the state college president $15,000, the university presidents $18,000.

If the Board of Regents begins experiencing buyer's remorse, they'll find that getting their top men off the payroll isn't an easy task.

UNLV President David Ashley and UNR President Milton Glick, among others, have four-year contracts. The documents stipulate that they will continue to receive their state-paid base salaries for the duration of the contract term if the board fires them for reasons including incompetence and failure to perform their duties.

If Ashley or Glick want out, no financial penalty exists for leaving early.

Maurizio Trevisan, a newly hired executive vice chancellor who oversees health sciences programs systemwide, gets an added perk once he receives tenure: If he decides he doesn't want to do his administrative work anymore, he can quit and become a faculty member earning $320,000 per year.

"This is not markedly different from the Nevada System of Higher Education's policy, which permits a tenured faculty member to leave an administrative position and return to the faculty," Bart Patterson, a system attorney, wrote in an e-mail.

(And Trevisan, an internationally recognized epidemiologist, is someone system officials wouldn't mind keeping around.)

With pay topping $400,000, how do Ashley's and Glick's salaries compare with their counterparts' at other public universities?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the median compensation for 182 public college leaders was $397,349 last year.

The chief at Glick's old home, Arizona State University, made $609,194. Ashley came to Nevada via the University of California, Merced, which was not included in the Chronicle's report because, as a new school, it's too small.

The chancellor of the entire University of California system made $434,166 last year. Compensation at UC, where no chancellor made more than $450,000, is low compared with that at many other big-name school systems. In November, UC regents put on hold a proposal to increase campus chancellors' salaries by 33 percent over four years.