J.N. Musto, executive director of the University of Hawaii faculty union, looks at the hiring of former UH President Evan Dobelle in 2001 as the point when Hawaii joined the rest of the nation in granting high salaries and benefits to top public university executives.

Dobelle made $442,000 a year compared with his predecessor Kenneth Mortimer’s $167,000 salary, and Mortimer was both UH system president and UH-Manoa chancellor.

At the time, the Board of Regents believed it had to pay Dobelle a big salary to attract the person it felt could build UH into a world-class institution.

A decade later the UH president is again under fire, and some of the same issues involving executive spending, salaries and perks like tenure and paid sabbaticals are part of the criticism.

"There’s considerable public anger around highly compensated people at the university," said state Rep. K. Mark Takai (D, Newtown-Pearl City). "Not only are they getting paid a lot of money, but it’s too many people being paid too much."

"Everybody wants to be fair and pay people a fair salary for what they are getting," said state Sen. Donna Kim (D, Kalihi Valley-Hale­iwa). "But when they (members of the public) see a number of people come to Hawaii and not perform, and they see all their benefits and they compare it to what they’re getting, I think it angers the average person."

UH President M.R.C. Greenwood’s salary of $475,000 is near the $480,000 national average for a system president, according to the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources survey for 2012. Greenwood took a voluntary 10 percent pay cut when she started and has not had a raise, although she also gets a $5,000 monthly housing allowance and access to a $150,000 yearly expense account provided by the UH Foundation.

Experts who study higher education say president and chancellor salaries in public higher education are comparable to a chief executive officer of a large business. But because taxpayers pay all or part of public university leaders’ salaries and benefits, and because of budget cuts in a tight economy, higher-education pay and benefits are coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism nationwide.

"In general, tuition has been going up, faculty salaries have not improved and administrators salaries have," said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a nonprofit think tank that promotes access to higher education. "It seems to me this is not a healthy trend."

Callan, who emphasized he is talking about trends in higher education and not specifically about Greenwood, said there is a growing anger at executive salaries and benefits at public universities and that it is undermining the public’s perception about institutions of higher learning.

"Presidents are always going to make more money, but when the percent increase is so high, I don’t think it’s a very healthy thing for confidence in higher education or for the presidents to lead in difficult times," he said.

Callan said the high salaries and benefits, such as paid sabbaticals and tenure, which guarantees employment even if a university leader steps down, make it seem like leaders are not accountable to the public.

"The higher up and the more you make, the less likely you are to be held accountable," Callan said. "We can’t afford in higher education to be seen as just another institution when the people at the top get treated so much better than the people they serve." 

The recent state Senate hearings on accountability at UH have shed light and criticism on a common practice at UH and across the country: the granting of tenure and paid sabbaticals to departing leaders like former UH-Manoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw.

The problem, Callan and other experts said, is that boards want to hire the person they think is the best possible candidate, and the competition is fierce.

"System heads are chief executive positions with responsibilities similar to those found in industry: the president of a state system may have oversight of a multibillion dollar budget and tens of thousands of employees," said Michael McLendon, professor of higher-education policy at Southern Methodist University, in an email. "The role inherently is deeply political, particularly in an era of severe budget constraints, unrest among faculty and students over issues such as state budget cuts and tuition rises, and growing clamor for greater performance and productivity in higher education. Consequently, the tenure in office of many of these system heads typically is not very long; many will last only a couple of years."

Attracting successful leaders away from places where they have job security often means granting tenure and the promise of paid sabbaticals that they would have received in their old jobs.

"A lot of this stuff, whether it’s good practice or bad practice, is more common in higher education than some of us would like," Callan said. "Every board wants to believe they are hiring the best possible candidate. They tend to believe that person is worth what the going rate is."

Greenwood’s contract calls for her to be paid a year’s salary if the contract ends early without cause. She also has tenure and the right to take a position on the faculty of the John A. Burns School of Medicine.

The Board of Regents will meet again Thursday to discuss her contract and whether to fire her, ask her to resign or to reaffirm their confidence in her leadership and keep her on.

If she’s asked to resign, the regents will have to negotiate a settlement. Besides a year’s pay, Greenwood could ask for a 10-month sabbatical and for a high-paid position in the medical school, where she can work until she qualifies for state retirement benefits. If the regents want her to leave the university, they would have to buy out her tenure.

If they fire her for cause, it would likely lead to an expensive court battle or, more likely, a negotiated settlement. That could also make it difficult for the university to attract top candidates for the job, who might be reluctant to step into a volatile situation.

Greenwood’s supporters, including many top business and community leaders, say she is worth what UH is paying her. They point to the development of the $1 billion Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea, the construction of a new UH community college campus in West Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS telescope on Hale­akala and the raising of graduation rates as evidence of Greenwood’s leadership.

"Marci is a respected leader who has brought our university to the edge of greatness," said retired judge and former Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee Walter Heen, who served with Greenwood on a board overseeing the development of Mauna Kea. Heen testified at a regents meeting Friday in support of Greenwood.

Detractors point to what they see as Greenwood’s mishandling of the aftermath of the failed Stevie Wonder concert and the rising administrative costs following the loss of $200,000 in UH athletic department funds as an indication of bad management.

Noel Kent, a professor of ethnic studies at UH-Manoa, questioned regents Friday on the rising costs in the aftermath of the concert fiasco.

"Why aren’t we investing these funds in improving education?" he asked.

Should the regents decide to let Greenwood go, a search for a new president will likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If that happens, Musto and lawmakers say, maybe it’s time for UH to look internally for the next president.

"We are unique," Musto said. "One of the problems we’ve suffered, I think systemically, is that we think we have to model ourselves against the rest of the United States."

Callan said he’s not sure what the solution is to rising administrative costs. But at some point, university boards must deal with public concerns about rising administrative costs.

"In general there’s a point at which it starts to hurt the university in all sorts of ways," he said. "You lose public confidence, legislators and governors become much more controlling, undermining the legitimate authority of boards and faculty senates."