Lesser-known perks for top UF executives include private-school tuition, car allowances and incentive pay, records show.

A job as a top administrator at the University of Florida can be lucrative, and the salaries of the president, provost, general counsel and others are only the most visible part of it.

Some get extra money to send their kids to private K-12 schools. Several get car allowances, despite the money not being tied to work-related car rentals, leasing or mileage.

The increasingly high salaries and benefits for presidents and top staff of public universities are part of what critics see as the corporatization of higher education.

Public records obtained by The Sun show UF executives routinely got raises in percentages above what faculty were given, and far above the public in general during lean economic times from the start of the mid-2000s through today.

The pay and benefit packages are in line with those of the top-flight public universities to which UF aspires. When UF President Kent Fuchs was hired in 2014 at a base salary of $860,000, three other large public universities — Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan — had all hired new presidents in recent months. All three had compensation packages of $900,000 or higher.

But UF administrators' salaries are well above those of others in public positions. Florida’s governor earns $130,273. The U.S. President earns $400,000.

UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said the state caps the amount of taxpayer money that can be spent on executive salaries at $200,000, so the rest of the salary comes from other sources.

But even former presidents get perks.

When Bernie Machen retired in 2014, his $3.9 million parachute package — paid by private money — included $450,000 to not go to work for another college.

Meanwhile, the United Faculty of Florida last year settled with UF for across-the-board raises of 1.5 percent for the 1,600 professors for whom it bargains.

Susan Hegeman, a union official and English professor, believes the high pay and extra perks reflect a changing view of top staff.

“There’s an assumption that the upper administrators are basically corporate executives. These are the kind of compensation packages for — I don’t know who else gets these, but it sure isn’t something that the rest of us mortals get,” Hegeman said. “The major issue for me is that this is a way to hide compensation from public view. A regular exploration of people’s salaries won’t cough up all this information about the extra ways that people are being compensated.”

When Jamie Keith was hired as UF’s top lawyer in 2006, she got a salary of $245,000. Keith got some perks too, including a $7,800 annual car allowance and $7,500 a year to pay for her son's private high school tuition.

Keith, who is on paid suspension because she is under internal investigation, now earns $389,500 — an almost 59 percent increase from when she started in 2006.

Charles Lane, hired as UF’s chief operating officer in 2014, also gets a car allowance and up to $10,000 a year for each of his two young children to attend private school.

UF's executive car allowances now pay them $9,000 a year.

Jodi Gentry, UF’s vice president for human resources, said the compensation is needed so UF can keep pace with other top public universities and to help it reach its goal of becoming a top 10 public school.

UF, Gentry said, is a complex organization that reaches every county in the state with the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. It also runs several hospitals in the region.

Getting top-notch people to run the university and its varied operations requires competitive pay, Gentry said.

“We take the idea of being careful about salaries very seriously. Our salaries are within the range of the compensation of administrators at other peer research universities. It’s the type of compensation that’s necessary if we are going to move UF up in the ranks of the most respected universities in the U.S.,” she said. “We have an annual budget of $5.5 billion. We have 16 colleges and a Division 1 sports program. We have two health centers. Research enterprise is huge. Our payroll is over $1.5 billion annually.”

Gentry and Sikes, the spokeswoman, added that perks such as private-school tuition and car allowances are part of the effort of luring top talent.

Asked why the money is given as a perk rather than simply increasing the salary, since car and tuition money can be spent with no restrictions, Gentry said she is reviewing such issues.

“One of my priorities is to really take a look at how we are approaching compensation to include looking into executive compensation — the decisions we made in the past and what makes sense moving forward,” Gentry said.

The highest paid UF official is David Guzick, president of UF Health, at $964,503. He also gets $50,000 a year as a “retirement contribution” and an incentive payment of no less than 35 percent of his base salary.

In addition to his $860,000 salary, Fuchs gets $150,000 a year toward his retirement, reimbursements for business travel and entertainment for himself and his wife, a tenured faculty appointment and a paid yearlong sabbatical in 2020 if he is still at UF.

Compensation for university presidents has been heavily researched by James H. Finkelstein, professor emeritus of public policy at Schar School of Public Policy and Government at George Mason University; and by Judith A. Wilde, senior associate dean and chief operating officer of the Schar School.

They have found that presidents’ salaries are growing nationwide and they bolster Hegeman’s contention that the job is viewed as more akin to a corporate CEO than a public employee.

Over the last 10 to 20 years, presidents’ salaries have gone up faster than faculty salaries nationwide, and the complexity of their contracts has increased with an array of perks and benefits, their research shows.

The compensation applies not just to incoming presidents, but to outgoing leaders, as well. But the non-compete payment given to Machen was unique.

“Your past president got something we had never, ever seen before in any president contract — which was an annual payment for non-compete. That was unique in the country,” Finkelstein said, adding it’s “...a substantial amount of money for agreeing not to become a president somewhere else. It caused me to scratch my head.”

Presidents often get hefty performance pay, retention pay, retirement contributions and perks in addition to their salary.

Common perks include a housing allowance if a campus does not have a president’s home, car allowances, tuition for dependents, charter jet service or business-class seats for commercial air travel.

While Wilde and Finkelstein have studied only presidents’ compensation in-depth, they said the same ballooning of benefits is happening for other university executives, including lawyers, provosts and financial officers. But they have never come across a university executive being paid to send their children to private K-12 schools.

A few theories for the increased pay and benefits exist, Finkelstein and Wilde said.

One is tied to coaches. At many universities, the highest paid employee is a football or men’s basketball coach. So university boards and presidents may believe they need to make the president’s pay at least similar to the coach's pay.

But perhaps more likely is the growing number of corporate executives being appointed to university boards of trustees and governors.

“It’s very possible that as the presidents see what those folks are earning they think ‘Why don’t I get something similar?” Wilde said. “The people on the board, who are the final ones who sign these contracts, see no issue with it because that is what they and their buddies are getting.”

Of UF’s 12-member board of trustees, six are or were top corporate executives, including a doctor who founded a health maintenance organization. Also on the board is another doctor, three lawyers and faculty and student representatives.

In a prepared statement given to The Sun, board Chairman James Heavener said trustees in March approved measures to increase their oversight of pay packages to senior executives.

“Board representatives must be notified in advance of new employment arrangements or pay increases for these positions,” Heavener said. “We believe that this new regimen will continue to protect Florida taxpayers while allowing the university to remain competitive and to attract the highest level of talent throughout the nation and the world in furtherance of the university’s stated mission to become a top 10 public institution.”

The Sun contacted two other trustees — one did not comment and one did not return a message.

Hegeman believes faculty members' role in helping UF become a top 10 university isn't reflected in their pay.

Union data shows that in 2014, UF assistant professors earned $76,200 while faculty at peer universities was much higher, including $99,200 at the University of California at Berkeley, $86,600 at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and $88,500 at the University of Texas at Austin.

Similar discrepancies exist for associate and full professors. Hegeman said the last raise did not improve UF’s standing in faculty salaries.

“Have our salaries markedly improved since then? No,” she said. “Even if that was the case, nationally we would still be well behind our peers.”

Hegeman added that Fuchs has repeatedly told faculty that increased pay is a priority.

Wilde and Finkelstein believe that in the short term, lucrative compensation will continue for university executives. But they added that corporations have started cutting perks, as research has shown that increased bonuses don't lead to higher growth.

“Here’s the bottom line — the president of a public university is, in our mind, a public executive,” Finkelstein said. “So the real question is: As a matter of public policy should they be compensated as if they are the head of a large enterprise like a corporation or should they be compensated as if they are the head of a public agency?”