The University of Texas (UT) system reportedly offered Gregory Fenves a base salary of $1 million to be the next president of the Austin campus, which he rejected.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Fenves' base salary was reveled to be $750,000 when the system announced his appointment to lead the Austin campus. The figure was surprising because the presidents of the system's other nine public institutions were making at least $1 million.

The Statesman reported obtaining emails in which Fenves asked for less in salary and a 10 percent performance-based annual bonus rather than the standard 12 percent.

"With many issues and concerns about administrative costs, affordability and tuition, such a salary will affect the ability of the president to work with the Texas Legislature on matters important to the university," Fenves told Pedro Reyes, the UT System's executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, in one email. "$1M is too high for a public university... "It will attract widespread negative attention from students and faculty given the difficult budgetary constraints of the past five years."

In the state of Texas and throughout the U.S., an increasing amount of public university presidents are accepting base salaries of $1 millions and more.

"This is a way of really putting his money where his mouth is - or really, putting his lower salary where his mouth is," Hillary Hart, former faculty council executive committee chair at UT-Austin, told the Huffington Post. "The faculty are really delighted."

The University of California system recently announced a two-year hold on a tuition increase that incited mass criticism and demonstrations from students at the schools. In addressing his annual performance bonus, Fenves reportedly indicated he did not want to let himself be influenced by money when making important decisions.