Nicholas Dirks stepped down as UC Berkeley’s chancellor this summer but will receive almost all of his executive salary, $434,000, for another year though he won’t teach or run campus programs.

The paid year off is a benefit provided under a policy approved by the University of California regents at least 17 years ago that rewards executives who are also tenured professors and will return to the classroom.

The purpose “is to allow top-flight academics to get back up to speed in their field and begin research, which they weren’t able to do while in their administrative role,” said Dianne Klein, a UC spokeswoman.

Dirks, a historian who has written books about India, won’t begin teaching at UC Berkeley until a year from now. Meanwhile, the former chancellor will receive a salary that is $196,700 higher than what he’ll earn as a professor next year. Klein said the paid leave is like a sabbatical, and because Dirks earned the credit for his leave while he was an executive, it is paid at the executive rate.

The former chancellor plans to spend his break attending conferences, giving lectures and working on a book about higher education, said Janet Gilmore, a campus spokeswoman.

Dirks, 66, joined UC four years ago and will receive 82 percent of his previous $531,900 salary. The policy requires executives to have worked at least five years to receive full pay.

Last year, The Chronicle revealed that UC Berkeley had allowed a former vice chancellor to receive the salary perk even though the former executive had been forced out of the administrative position for violating UC’s sexual harassment policy.

The executive-salary perk raises questions about UC’s budget priorities three months after a state auditor found that the office of UC President Janet Napolitano amassed $175 million in reserve funds it failed to disclose before asking the regents to raise tuition for this fall. An independent investigator hired by the regents is also looking into revelations that the president’s office interfered with the auditor’s survey of campuses, rendering the survey results useless. The survey’s purpose was to learn whether services provided by Napolitano’s office amounted to money well spent.

Dirks, UC Regents Chairman George Kieffer and Vice Chairman John Peréz did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, the budget committee chair who called for the audit with Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, condemned UC’s practice of handing administrators an extra year’s salary.

“I’m shocked it wasn’t revisited during the great recession,” Ting said. “We keep asking for more access for California students. UC tells us we have to find state funding for it, but they seem to have all the funding they need when comes to executive compensation and executive parachutes.”

Last week, the Sacramento Bee reported that UC Davis’ embattled former Chancellor Linda Katehi has just concluded her year of paid leave and will earn $318,000 to teach one engineering course each quarter for the next nine months.

Katehi, who joined UC Davis in 2009, earned more than that while on leave: $424,360.

During her year off, Katehi served as chair-elect of the engineering section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and as president-elect of Women in Engineering ProActive Network, said UC Davis spokeswoman Dana Topousis.

Katehi also traveled “to connect with colleagues who are involved in the most recent advancements in her research area,” Topousis said, and began writing a book on an undisclosed topic.

Dirks announced a year ago that the 2016-17 academic year would be his last as chancellor. Three major problems characterized his tenure: a $150 million budget deficit the campus is still trying to eliminate, a series of sexual harassment scandals, and the death of a football player whose medical condition was all but ignored by the athletics department. UC Berkeley admitted liability and paid the family a $4.75 million settlement.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov