President Bernie Machen will stick with The Gator Nation a year longer than he planned, but he won't get paid more for it.
The UF Board of Trustees voted last week to extend Machen's contract by one year, from Dec. 31, 2012, to Dec. 31, 2013.
Chairman Carlos Alfonso said the board requested the extension so Machen could see through some of his own initiatives, particularly Florida Tomorrow, a capital-raising campaign for UF.
He will not receive a raise for the extra year.
Machen's salary is $432,808, according to a March 17 report from UF's Office of Institutional Planning and Research.
"I don't think that Bernie felt that in a time of austerity that he should be getting a raise, and neither did the board," Alfonso said.
This idea is in sharp contrast to the presidents of many private universities, who have been taking raises despite the lingering recession.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, which recently published the salaries of top-earning private university presidents, reported that the highest-paid president in 2009 was Constantine N. Papadakis of Drexel University.
Papadakis was paid $4,912,127, a 202-percent increase from the previous year.
Others in the top five were the presidents of Johns Hopkins University, University of the Pacific, Northwestern University and Vanderbilt University, whose salaries ranged from $1.89 million to $3.82 million.
Nicholas S. Zeppos of Vanderbilt University was the only president in the top 10 earners who took a pay cut from 2008 to 2009. His salary decreased by 21 percent.
The Chronicle's survey of presidential pay at 482 private colleges, using federal tax returns, found the median compensation was $385,909, a 2.2-percent increase from 2008 to 2009.
The highest-paid public university president is E. Gordon Lee of Ohio State University, who was paid $1,323,911 for the 2009-2010 academic year.
This is a steep step up from the next four highest earners from the University of Texas system, University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan system and University of Utah, whose salaries are in the $700,000 range.
Although his salary is not in the top 10, "President Machen makes a very competitive wage for what he's responsible for," UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said.
"The University of Florida is one of the largest, most complex research universities in the country."
