By: Piper Hutchinson | Louisiana Illuminator
LSU could pay its new president and chancellor millions annually under lucrative contracts that include dozens of incentives, some of which have no limits.
System President Wade Rousse and main campus Chancellor Jim Dalton, both hired last month, will each receive a base salary of $750,000. It’s the same compensation LSU paid William Tate, who was both president and chancellor before leaving for the same job at Rutgers University in New Jersey earlier this year.
Rousse and Dalton can receive dozens of bonuses on top of their base salaries for meeting certain benchmarks. They include one-time payments as well as bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that renew annually. Some of the incentives are also duplicated, meaning LSU will pay Rousse and Dalton for meeting the same goals.
Their contracts also offer financial rewards that can be paid multiple times in the same year with no cap, making it difficult to gauge exactly how much the new leaders will be paid annually. See the full list of incentives below.
The LSU Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the contracts without questions Thursday. Their approval comes as the university is under austerity measures due to the uncertainty of federal funding from President Donald Trump’s administration.
Rousse declined to take questions from reporters about the contracts after Thursday’s board meeting.
LSU Board Chairman Scott Ballard said he would speak with journalists but has not made himself available.
The incentives for Rousse and Dalton are far more extensive than those paid to Tate, which led to criticism at the time from faculty who believed he was profiting off of their labor.
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The contracts for LSU’s new leadership include revenue-related benchmarks.
Rousse can get $75,000 for every year state infrastructure funding for the LSU System reaches $50 million and an additional $25,000 for every $25 million above that.
In 2025, the Louisiana Legislature sent LSU more than $610 million in the state construction budget, meaning Rousse would have gotten a bonus of $625,000.
The pair will also each receive a $20,000 bonus when new federal funding exceeds $20 million a year. For every $5 million in new federal funding over $30 million, Rousse will get $40,000, and Dalton will receive $20,000.
One-time incentives include $50,000 for Rousse for every LSU System school that achieves a 4% increase in its four-year graduation rate. Dalton will receive $100,000 when LSU’s Baton Rouge campus hits that same threshold.
Dalton and Rousse will also see bonuses if there is a decrease in the disparity between LSU faculty pay and that of peer universities. Last year, faculty pay at LSU was more than 16% lower than other land grant institutions.
They will also receive $25,000 each when LSU’s accreditor approves its new organizational structure. LSU is currently in the beginning stages of a reorganization which will make the system’s research-intensive campuses part of the flagship. This is designed to boost LSU’s research numbers to attain membership in the Association of American Universities, a goal Tate first set to place LSU among the top research universities.
Both men will also receive $100,000 each when:
LSU achieves a Top 50 ranking among public universities;
an LSU System institution is designated as a National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center;
one of its campuses receives a National Institutes of Health Clinical Translational Science Award; and
a school secures a federally funded research and development center or a field site of a national laboratory.
Several other incentive payments for Rousse and Dalton are related to pursuing Association of American Universities membership.
For example, Dalton will receive a $20,000 bonus for every 20 doctoral degrees awarded above the current threshold, granted the degrees are counted within the association’s membership metrics. Rousse will receive $20,000 for every 20 doctoral degrees any LSU System school awards, regardless of whether they count toward membership.
Dalton can also receive $20,000 for each faculty member recruited who is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering or Medicine and $10,000 for the recruitment of every faculty member with certain prestigious awards, fellowships or memberships the association tracks.
Dalton can also receive six repeatable bonuses totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars for increasing LSU’s research spending.
Both leaders would also get $200,000 each for staying on the job all five years of their contracts.
The pair’s contracts also include other standard perks for university leadership, including the use of homes the LSU Foundation owns, a $15,000 annual vehicle allowance and one private membership club each.
Dalton’s contract stipulates he will receive a tenured full professorship in LSU’s Department of Chemistry, which he will retain even if he is fired as president.
Rousse’s contract states he will receive a faculty position in the economics department, though his rank and tenure status will not be determined until he is no longer president. This discrepancy is likely because Dalton ascended through the tenured faculty ranks before becoming an administrator, while Rousse did not.