Ex-Cal Chancellor Dirks Goes On Break, Will Earn $434,000
BERKELEY (KCBS) -- Former University of California, Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks will continue to collect his executive level pay, even though he's not returning to the classroom right away as originally planned.
Dirks would earn $434,000, nearly $200,000 more than what he will get as a professor when he goes back to teaching. The university said Dirks will spend his break going to conferences and working on a book about higher education.
The pay is an executive perk meant to help former top brass matriculate back into academia.
But it also raises questions about UC's priorities after a state audit discovered a $175 million dollar secret fund that UC failed to disclose before asking the Regents for a tuition hike.
San Francisco Assemblyman Phil Ting was one of two legislators who called for the audit.
Ting told the San Francisco Chronicle he's shocked about Dirks' extra year's pay. The lawmaker said UC keeps asking the state for more money but "they seem to have all the funding they need when it comes to executive parachutes."
After the audit came out in April, Ting said, "It's clear that there needs to be systemic reform from top to bottom of the university."
Dirks stepped down this year in the face of a $150 million campus budget deficit and a series of sexual harassment scandals involving staff.