With the appointment of a new president at San Jose State University, we are once more reminded that the leaders of California State University have created an exact mirror of the social inequality in our society.

In effect, Chancellor Timothy White is breaking the promise of social mobility that has been central to California’s public higher education for decades.

Last month, the CSU board of trustees appointed a new president of San Jose State, Dr. Mary Papazian. Compensation for the president will be $361,000 per year, plus a car allowance. She will live in a house provided by the university.

This rate of pay, according to the Brookings Institution, puts the Papazians in the 95th percentile of households in San Jose. (A link to the study appears in this column at www.mercurynews.com/opinion.)

The employees most responsible for the work and reputation of SJSU are the faculty. Their work with students creates the citizens and employees who have made California such a vibrant and creative society.

Nevertheless, White insists that what brings value to a CSU campus is not the faculty but the presidents. He said this once again when he visited San Jose State in November.

White views the CSUs as businesses that provide educational services. In his mind, CSU exists primarily to manage money and raise it from private sources.

Brookings found that the lowest 20th percentile of households in San Jose earned up to $36,120 annually in 2014. Half the faculty at San Jose State are in, or near, this 20th percentile. Not only is CSU underpaying its faculty, but it is acting like Amazon, Walmart and fast food companies by hiring many employees on part-time contracts — half of the instructors at SJSU.

In fall 2015 the median income for SJSU faculty was $39,319 per year. The most highly educated members of the work force are falling out of the middle class. Like so many others in our society, they are struggling with the high cost of living in the Bay Area.

White’s approach sees faculty as an inconvenient expense, while the students are a source of revenue.

Low pay for faculty contrasts sharply with inflated salaries for an expanding phalanx of administrators. Thinning ranks of professors, counselors, librarians and coaches are asked to do more with less, and are told to enjoy the psychic rewards of the teaching.

As dedicated as we are to our students, we are like many other workers today: running ragged and underpaid. And our students notice.

Faculty salaries have increased only 3 percent since 2009. During the recession, faculty accepted flat pay because administrators said the CSU had no money. Furloughs in 2010 reduced faculty take-home pay by 10 percent. Now, in 2016, administrators tell everyone they have money, but rather than putting that money to work supporting faculty instructing students, they say they have other priorities.

All the chancellor’s praises of education are belied by the broken promise of California’s public higher education. Misguided policies have prioritized administration and technology over education, reproducing the social inequality that undermines our democracy.

The chancellor’s preference for raising the pay of administrators instead of faculty encourages young people’s cynicism about education. Putting the classroom relationship between instructor and student first requires fair compensation for the work of teaching and advising that the faculty perform.

Rather than creating more inequality, White has an opportunity to correct the distortion in California’s educational priorities: Pay a fair wage by raising faculty compensation by 5 percent.

Preston Rudy, president of the California Faculty Association at San Jose State University, is a member of the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. He wrote this for this newspaper.