BERKELEY, Calif. -- The news that some high-level executives at the University of California are getting paid more does not sit well with other workers at the UC system, many of whom have seen their pay cut and their workloads increase recently.

“We're already outraged with their compensation as it is,” said Nancy Kato, Assistant Registrar at Boalt Law School. “At every meeting we're being told there's not enough money -- and then the decision comes out that there's enough to pay top executives more money, and more money, and more money.”

News that more than two dozen top officials at UC's ten campuses are getting pay raises, stipends and other benefits has further ratcheted up tension between UC workers and executives. For example, at UC San Francisco, Chief Operating Officer Tomi Ryba, who made almost $550,000 a year, left in January. Two of those hired to temporarily fill the position received 6% to 25% increases in their current salaries.

UC system Spokesman Peter King said Friday that the raises were tied to new responsibilities the executives recently took on.

“They took on significant new duties, significant new obligations,” said King. “I don't consider that a raise. [It’s] more of a new job,” he said.

King’s response didn’t sit well with Nancy Kato, the Assistant Registrar at UC Berkeley's Boalt Law School. She says she and others have been forced to do more for less ever since the registrar left six months ago.

“No one's saying to me or to my coworkers ‘Let's give you more compensation for taking on more work’,” she said.

In addition, students at UC schools will pay 9.3% more in the fall in tuition and fees, and most of the system's 180,000 employees will get furlough days amounting to about a 10% cut in pay.

“One thing you worry about is brain drain,” said King. “Not only of faculty, but of executives.”

Terry Connelly, business school dean of the private nonprofit Golden Gate University in San Francisco said that he believes it's time for public universities to tie pay raises to performance.

“To ratchet up salaries just because someone else got an increase or because that's the way it's always been done in the past,” said Connelly. “That's how business got itself in trouble.”