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GREENSBORO - With an economy in decline and the country's financial outlook bleak, the nation's colleges and universities have sought out strong leadership.

And they've been willing to pay for it.

Nearly one-third of America's public university presidents earn more than $500,000 per year, according to the annual Chronicle of Higher Education survey released last week.

In the days since the survey was published, several of the highest-paid presidents said they would give back part of their pay or forgo their raises.

Pat Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said he had never heard of such a wave of givebacks.

"When you see a cluster like this," Callan said, "it seems like sort of belated recognition that this presidential pay thing has gotten out of hand. People are getting tuition increases, some faculty are facing layoffs - it just doesn't look too good for presidents, no matter how capable they are, to be getting so much money. Americans have had a touching faith in higher education; it's losing its good image with the public."

Presidents' salaries grew by an average of 7.6 percent in 2007-08 - the year measured in the survey - and 15 public university chiefs took home at least $700,000.

That's more than the combined salaries of the chancellors at Greensboro's state universities: UNCG's Linda Brady makes $315,000, and N.C. A&T's Stanley Battle makes $273,156.

The state's best-paid public chancellors - UNC-Chapel Hill's Holden Thorp and N.C. State's James Oblinger - make $420,000 apiece.

Every chancellor in the 16-school UNC system earns less than the national median salary for public university presidents - $427,400. That figure is $100,000 less than at private universities, where the median salary barely changed from a year ago.

But the gap is narrowing. Public universities and their boards are increasingly willing to spend big to keep their leaders from being lured away by private schools with deep pockets. Many of those board members come from the business world.

"(They) see the investment in a CEO as the single most cost-effective investment they can make in the whole university," said Raymond Cotton, a Washington lawyer who specializes in college compensation.

The salary increases in the survey reflect contracts signed before the economy crashed.

Chronicle editor Jeffrey Selingo said there is less data covering previous economic downturns, but that they did not appear to slow the upward trend of presidential salaries.

"The explanation could be in down times boards think you need to pay for stable leadership," Selingo said.

The highest-paid president in this year's survey, reporting compensation of $2.8 million for 2006-07, is David Sargent, president of private Suffolk University in Boston.

Gordon Gee of Ohio State was the highest paid public university president, earning $1,346,000, including a recently announced $310,000 bonus.

Duke's Richard Brodhead was North Carolina's highest-paid private university president at $628,108. Wake Forest's Nathan Hatch made $504,512 in salary, but benefits pushed his total compensation to a state-best $728,235.

The Associated Press and The New York Times contributed to this report.

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com