When incoming Cal State system chancellor Timothy P. White takes office at the end of the year, he’ll be making about $40,000 less than his predecessor.

That’s because White, in a letter to the CSU trustees, requested a 10% pay cut as his contribution to balancing the system’s books.

White’s salary reduction doesn’t apply to other top administrators in the CSU system, of course, and amounts to just one fifty-thousandth of the system’s state appropriations for the coming year, so assessing whether it’s a worthy step in the right direction of a meaningless bit of PR work is left as an exercise for the reader.

Here’s another stat worth contemplating, though: The pay cut took White from a salary amounting to 105% of that of the President of the United States to one amounting to 95% of the president’s.

In fairness, though, POTUS does have a nicer airplane.