America's tuition-paying families keep taking it on the chin. The cost of college keeps going up, while savings balances are going down.

Now you can add to that the news that presidents of public universities around the country got boosts in pay and benefits for 2007-08 that averaged 7.6 percent higher than the previous year. Plus, who knows the size of their increases this year, as the national economy went into the tank?

The numbers come from the annual executive compensation survey of the Chronicle of Higher Education, which was released Monday. In hard dollars, 14 presidents from public research universities earned $700,000 or more and nearly one-third made more than $500,000.

No one should begrudge competitive compensation for a leader who runs an institution with thousands of students and employees, sometimes spread over multiple campuses. But boards of trustees send mixed signals when they boost executive pay beyond the rate of inflation while crying poor before state legislatures and hitting up families for higher tuitions almost annually.

Of interest to students who attend public universities in Pennsylvania are these president or chancellor earnings packages listed in the survey for 2007-08: Graham Spanier of Penn State, $611,367; Mark Nordenberg of Pitt, $590,200; Ann Weaver Hart of Temple, $572,900; and Judy Hample, then-chancellor of the 14 state-owned universities in the State System of Higher Education, $364,865.

The Post-Gazette reported last week that the 13 university presidents of the State System who were eligible for a raise in 2008-09 got increases ranging from 2 percent to 11 percent. But their salaries, which fall between $189,195 and $253,428, are shown by at least two rankings to be below the average of their peers. As we said last week, raises in that situation are justified.

But when the taxpayers are asked to give more of their tax dollars to support state-affiliated schools and when parents and students are told to dig deeper when writing checks for tuition, room and board, public university presidents must lead by example and draw a tighter line at their rich rewards.

You might even call it school spirit.