University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins will be paid through the end of his contract in July 2026 even though he’s leaving the post next month.
The Arizona Board of Regents is still in legal discussions over Robbins’ pay and responsibilities and previously told the Arizona Daily Star that it “would honor the terms of President Robbins‘ contract.”
He currently makes a base salary of $734,407, after taking a 10% pay cut in March amid the university’s $177 million deficit at the time. His original base salary was $816,008 and his entire compensation package was over $1 million a year. Robbins announced in April, amid the financial crisis, that he would step down by the end of his contract or when the regents hired his successor.
His successor, Suresh Garimella, who was president of the University of Vermont, will begin his tenure in Tucson on Oct. 1 and be paid a yearly salary of $810,000.
Robbins’ predecessor, Ann Weaver Hart, remained at the UA in a special professorship after stepping down as president in 2017, also amid controversy. It is unclear whether Robbins, a prominent cardiothoracic surgeon, will land a similar gig.
Weaver Hart was paid more than $800,000 over two years in her transition role on the college of education’s faculty despite taking a one-year sabbatical and never teaching a class, the Arizona Daily Star reported in 2019. That compensation included $500,000, the amount owed to Hart in her presidential contract, which ran through June 2018. She was tasked with helping Robbins transition into the presidency. She retired from the UA in 2019.
The UA has paid other administrators through their contracts after they leave.
The Star reported that former Athletic Director Dave Heeke, ousted by Robbins in January this year, will be paid his salary of $1.04 million through his contract ending on March 31, 2025. Additionally, Heeke will be paid “any earned incentive payments,” according to a university spokesperson at the time.
Similarly, it was also revealed in January that former Chief Financial Officer Lisa Rulney was being paid her salary of $506,325 through June 30, 2024, so that the university wouldn’t get sued, Robbins said after removing her from the post in December 2023. He told the Star she was paid to sit at home as a “special advisor” and answer the interim CFO’s questions if he called her. Now, according to UA officials, Rulney is officially off the university payroll.
Leila Hudson, chair of the UA Faculty Senate, said this week, “It’s a sign of chronic governance failure at the Arizona Board of Regents that the administrators who drove the University of Arizona into a financial ditch are allowed — over and over and over again — to coast out on their all too generous contracts rather than being swiftly and unceremoniously dismissed for cause as they would have been in any self-respecting business enterprise.”
Hudson added that it’s a “poke in the eye to the university community” after, she says, the UA has lost nearly 700 staff and 110 faculty since the budget crisis was revealed last November.
“Rewarding failure, cultivating cheerful mediocrity and obedience, and buying docility and silence with hard-won taxpayer money and families’ tuition payments that should be re-invested in our academic mission is no way to govern,” Hudson said.
Spokespersons for the UA and the regents did not respond to requests for comment.
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