Walk into a 450-person lecture classroom on test day and look around. It takes the tuition payments (at the in-state rate) of nearly every one of these students to pay for UW President Mark Emmert’s $900,000 salary.

He is one of the highest-paid academic officials in the nation.

However, some have chosen to twist these facts to make insinuations that Emmert’s salary is “excessive,” much as politicians often claim that CEO salaries at private corporations are excessive. Revelations of egregious conspiracy between CEOs and boards have tainted the debate, leading many to believe that all executive compensation is based on crooked back-door dealings.

While such failures of fiduciary duty have no doubt occurred and ought to be punished, this claim of underhanded scheming is a libelous accusation against 99 percent of corporate and nonprofit CEOs. The dark clouds that gather over any well-paid executive still linger in generalized form, raising premature innuendo in compensation debates.

Emmert is paid what he is paid because his job is analogous to managing a very large corporation. A huge part of leadership at universities, nonprofits and businesses is attracting financial input, and on that front Emmert has done superbly.

Although we might be able to get a talented person willing to manage the UW at no charge, finding such a person who also has top-drawer competencies would be a chancy enterprise. Candidates may have the best intentions but simply lack the top-drawer competencies required of a UW president.

We must recognize that in general, talent follows capital, and that relying heavily on non-economic motives produces inconsistent results. The marginal increase in the market price of a skilled executive rises precipitously as you pursue the best of the best, and attempting to fight this as “unfair” or “unbalanced” is a futile effort.

The UW Board of Regents might be able to get a president 80 percent as good as Emmert for a third of the pay, but given the scale of the University’s operations, the cost of that 20 percent drop in performance would far exceed the $600,000 we’d save by going cheap at the top. If you want the best, you have to be willing to pay for the best.

Emmert is a loyal Husky, but he’s also a human being who wants to make what he deserves. Nobody can fairly condemn a man for asking the market price for anything, including his services in employment. Would you entrust the leadership of the university to a rent-a-president paid $10,000 a year?

Emmert’s compensation is a model for the public and private sector. It is determined by an independent board of directors — the regents — and is fully disclosed to the shareholders — taxpayers and students. It is also what Emmert deserves, as demonstrated by his high performance as our president. The fact that his salary is very high should not, in and of itself, invite any suspicion in a transparent system, where Emmert’s pay is a matter of public record.

Likewise, corporations will create the most certainty for investors by voluntarily making all aspects of governance transparent. At the same time, no institution, public or private, should fear paying its executives what they are worth, even if that sum appears exorbitant to jealous noisemakers and rabble-rousing congressmen.