No stock options in a public institution, of course, so the $200K deferred is probably a performance bonus. Texas A&M is a huge organization, (crediting wikipedia) maybe ~10K staff, 60K students, multibillion dollar budget, research and ties to heavies like NASA, etc etc etc.

Like I said, modest pay for the CEO of a huge organization.

Now Roger Goodell making $40million/year as NFL commissioner, now that's outrageous.

The student loan debt burden is an outrage too, though I don't see how it connects to the relatively-modest salary of a university president. (I'm commenting on public institutions like the one you fingered; the reality is it's the for-profit schools whose presidents make the outrageous salaries. Yay free enterprise.) Our system of squeezing every last penny out of students in interest, and profit at the for-profit schools, is perverse and elitist. This is one area where socialism is defensible on every ground from moral through economic: Education at every level ought to be free and universally accessible.

hank makes a point too, about the motivation behind the answers to that survey. It's an emotional, irrational thing, anti-intellectualism and populism in general. Populism's about violently rejecting the "rationality" and "logic" and "objectivity" and "truth" that those despised elites are always preaching about. You know that every part of my description fits Trumpists to a "T".