UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang Getting $240K Pay Raise Before Retiring
Yang, Who Is Stepping Down at End of School Year, Will See Salary Increase from $579,750 to $820,000
UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang will receive a monstrous salary raise as he enters his final year at the institution. The UC Regents approved increases in chancellors’ salaries across the system to compete with top-ranked public universities.
Yang’s salary raise from $579,750 to $820,000 will be paid through private donors instead of tuition money, as will the other salary increases. The longest-serving chancellor in UC history, Yang announced in August that he would be stepping down as chancellor at the end of the 2024-2025 school year to go back to the classroom for research and teaching.
“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,” read the UC Regents’ September 19 salary approval document. Regents policy states, “When a UC chancellor’s compensation falls behind the market for university leaders … the President shall recommend to the Regents an adjustment to the applicable chancellor’s compensation so that it is more competitive … with peer institutions.”
Most UC chancellors received a 4.2 percent base salary increase, with another bump that put them up to market rate — in Yang’s case, a 24.2 percent market-rate increase.
This year’s increase will bring the average UC chancellor’s salary from the 30th percentile among public universities nationwide to the 48th.
Chancellors from UC Davis, Irvine, Merced, Riverside, and San Francisco received similar increases, as their compensations were “[lagging] behind the market,” read the approval document.
Cynthia Larive, the UC Santa Cruz chancellor, opted to voluntarily forgo her raise for the 2024-2025 school year. UC San Francisco chancellor Sam Hawgood is now the highest paid in the UC system, making just shy of $1.2 million annually.
