Topeka ? The Kansas Board of Regents wants to keep up with the Joneses when it comes to paying the leaders of its state universities.

With concerns the presidents and chancellor of the six state universities will be lured away by bigger paychecks in other states, regents are beginning a study of how private donations can be used to augment state-paid salaries.

“I don’t think we ought to have to do this, to raise private funds to pay the going rate,” Regent Lew Ferguson said. “I think the state ought to pay the going rate. But that’s not happening. The trend is to enhance these salaries with privately raised gifts.”

None of the five presidents nor Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway currently receives private funds in their salaries, and none received raises this year.

But Reggie Robinson, president and CEO of the regents, said a donor had given money to supplement the salaries of Hemenway and Kansas State University President Jon Wefald.

Robinson declined to disclose more information about the gift, saying the universities’ endowment associations weren’t prepared to announce the donation. John Scarffe, a KU Endowment Association spokesman, also declined to discuss the gift.

Robinson said the donations to CEOs would be similar to endowment associations and foundations using private money to attract professors.

According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, only three CEOs in the Big 12 Conference make less than Hemenway, who will earn $219,420 this year. They are Wefald at $209,820 a year, James Halligan at Oklahoma State University at $215,000 and Richard Wallace at the University of Missouri-Columbia at $212,920.

Robert Gates, president of Texas A&M’s College Station campus, makes the most in the Big 12 at $300,000 per year.

Of the 11 public universities in the Big 12, only one currently supplements the salary of its CEO with private money, according to the Carnegie Foundation. Larry Faulkner, president of the University of Texas at Austin, has $187,279 of his $253,224 salary paid with private money.

The University of Texas system chancellor, Mark Yudof, has $379,769 of his $450,000 salary paid with private money.

Ferguson, who chairs the regents’ CEO compensation committee, said the state didn’t have policies for how to handle gifts to supplement top administrator salaries. Because regents set CEO salaries, they may play a role in distributing such gifts.

“We know these salaries are way below market value now,” he said. “We also know when this board faces the task in the future of hiring a chancellor or a president, it’s going to take a much greater compensation because of what the market value is.”

Scarffe, from the KU Endowment Association, said raising money to supplement Hemenway’s salary hadn’t been a priority in the past.

“It wouldn’t be as much a competition thing as it would be to attract and retain the best possible person for that position,” Scarffe said. “It’s like any private gift: If a donor on his own accord decided that was a priority of his or hers and decided to make a gift, it’s up to the universities how to accept and administer the gift.”

Hemenway, in California Thursday night for the NCAA Tournament, was reluctant to discuss money: “I haven’t given that very much thought. I do know that the regents have been concerned that the compensation for presidents and chancellors in the Kansas state system is well behind the compensation of other state universities, and that’s entirely true. Where that will end up, I don’t know.

“I don’t think it’s very seemly for the chancellor to talk about his salary.”