California college students decrying “evil one-percenters” during Occupy Wall Street protests need to understand that their administrators are much more likely to be in that group than small business owners.

As these students are desperately pinching pennies in a tight economy and cities are collapsing under the weight of public employee pensions, university officials are expanding their rolls and setting up very sweet deals, as reported by KMJ Radio:

Spending on University of California salaries has climbed nearly 29 percent over the past six years, even as the public system grapples with ballooning retiree expenses that have created a long-term $24.6 billion shortfall.

The 10-campus system paid $10.6 billion for 259,043 jobs last year, up from $8.2 billion in 2006, according to an Orange County Register analysis of the latest UC pay data. Staff numbers grew by about 6 percent over the same period, and student enrollment increased by about 10 percent.

UC’s retiree pension fund had a projected $10 billion unfunded liability as of last year, and its retiree health care fund had a $14.6 billion unfunded liability – two gaping deficits UC officials began to address in recent years.

The University of California is not alone in the lack of basic fiscal sense, either. Earlier this year, budget shenanigans related to California State University salaries created a rare example of bipartisanship in the Golden State. This report comes from Dave Roberts of Cal Watchdog.

In California’s highly partisan political world, there are few issues on which most agree. But a rare unity was achieved last July when the California State University Board of Trustees awarded the new president of San Diego State University a $400,000 salary ($100,000 more than his predecessor) in the same meeting that they raised tuition by 12 percent. It was denounced from left to right.

The board’s tone deafness, by sticking it to poor students while gilding a fat cat, was a “let them eat cake” moment worthy of Marie Antoinette. Students had already been feeling dissed. The $294 per semester increase to $4,884 a year for undergraduates came on top of a previous 10 percent hike and a tripling of tuition in the past decade, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The CSU board caught flack for giving SDSU’s Elliot Hirshman $350,000 from the taxpayers along with another $50,000 from the SDSU Foundation and free housing in a $1.1 million home. But that compensation is not much of an outlier among CSU presidents, who are all safely ensconced in the 1 percent of top earners.