University of Maryland President Wallace Loh will receive a $75,000 raise, according to a University System of Maryland Board of Regents news release.
The board approved the pay hike at its Sept. 15 meeting. It will begin retroactively on July 1 of this year.
Loh earned a $600,314 salary last academic year, according to The Diamondback’s 2017 salary guide. For each of the two years before, he earned $526,590.
[Read more: The Diamondback’s 2017 Salary Guide]
The increase was based “primarily on strong performance,” according to the news release. Before the raise, Loh’s salary placed him in the 43rd percentile of comparable university presidents, according to a report commissioned by the Board of Regents.
“The newly approved compensation philosophy targets the 50th percentile on average for system presidents, dependent on several other factors, strong performance first among them,” the statement read.
Loh’s base salary ranks seventh among the 14 Big Ten university presidents.
[Read more: Some UMD grad students are upset with Loh’s announcement of the school’s new dean]
University of Maryland University College President Javier Miyares and Salisbury University President Janet Dudley-Eshbach also received raises of $50,000 and $20,000, respectively.
The change is part of a new system for compensating system senior executives, which will make use of more “systematized performance assessments” so that system presidential salaries more closely match their performance.
“Performance and accountability must be key,” James Brady, Board of Regents chairman, said in the press release. “In accepting the Sibson report, approving the new compensation philosophy and, based on the data and new guidelines, adjusting the salaries of three high-performing presidents, the Board of Regents today further strengthened the tie between pay and performance for all USM leaders.”
