Despite increasing budget cuts to the California State University system, top administrators gave themselves raises while hiking student tuition. Some executives make up to $400,000 year while their students have to take out loans to cover their education. Messed up, right?

Cal State officials have long argued that they must offer competitive salaries to attract the most qualified candidates.

But legislators, as well as Gov. Jerry Brown, have criticized the approach as flawed at a time when the state’s budget crisis has forced deep funding cuts at both Cal State and the University of California.

Well now, the chairman of CSU’s governing board will propose capping the pay of new executives at 10% above what their predecessors made in the wake of stinging criticism of recent salary decisions.

Chairman Herb Carter said on Tuesday that the limit would address concerns raised by several state lawmakers who have introduced legislation that would establish stricter policies and curb the trustees’ ability to set compensation.

Carter’s proposal would set a maximum of about $325,000 for most presidents. In response to the controversial hiring of new San Diego State president (who received a 12% raise) over the summer, the Cal State board formed a committee to review salary and selection policies.

The salary controversy had become a distraction that was hampering discussion of other important issues, Carter said in an interview.

“We have been accused of being tone deaf, and we are not,” he said. “We need to get this discussion behind us, and we need to get back to the discussion of how do we retain and graduate students.”

Carter indicated that under his proposal future presidents of San Diego State could see a salary reduction to bring them in line with the cap.

The Board of Trustees were scheduled to consider revising the formula used to set salary and benefits for new presidents in the 23-campus system at their meeting earlier this week.

The proposed method would use a list of comparison colleges and universities from around the country to determine appropriate compensation.

The committee is recommending that Cal State campuses be sorted into five categories, depending on location, enrollment, research funding and other criteria and that the mean salary of presidents at the comparison institutions be used to determine compensation.