When the University System of Maryland entered into severance negotiations with former Towson University President Mark L. Perkins in April, it had a strong argument against a large payoff: Perkins had been ousted for excessive spending on his presidential mansion.

But Perkins held a strong card of his own, those close to the talks say: an unusually favorable contract that was approved by the system's Board of Regents without a full review. That contract - drafted by a lawyer recommended by Perkins - helped persuade the regents to give him a severance package worth about $400,000 after just eight months in office.

Stung by the Perkins episode, the Board of Regents has revised its policy for approving presidential contracts to make sure that hires don't take advantage of agreements.

Specifically, Perkins' contract included a provision that he could become a tenured faculty member at Towson after serving as president. Such clauses are common in presidential contracts, but the terms of Perkins' clause were unusually favorable to him: As a faculty member, he would receive ten-twelfths - about 83 percent - of his presidential salary of $208,000.

Typically, experts say, presidents who step down to join the faculty - in most cases for a light teaching load - receive about 60 percent of their presidential pay. Under Perkins' contract, he would have been paid $173,300 a year to teach at Towson - about $100,000 more than the average for full professors.

"That is a little on the high side," said Robert H. Atwell, a former president of the American Council on Education and co-author of a book about presidential compensation.

"That's one heck of a contract," said James L. Fisher, a higher education consultant and former Towson president. "I've never seen more than 60 or 70 percent of presidential salary, and I've probably done more presidential contracts than any other consultant in the country. That's very high."

Those who have seen the contract, which the system has declined to release, say the tenure clause was unclear about whether the $173,300 faculty salary would last only for the duration of Perkins' three-year presidential contract or whether it would be permanent because tenure is a lifetime appointment.

But those who have studied the contract say Perkins, 53, would have had a strong claim to collecting the $173,300 salary for the rest of his career if he had chosen to stay at Towson.

The contract was drafted by Raymond D. Cotton, a Washington lawyer who regents say was recommended by Perkins and whose services were paid for by the university system.

Cotton did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The university system has limited experience with presidential contracts because most of its 11 presidents, unlike Perkins, were satisfied with a letter of appointment from the regents. But the contracts it does sign are generally supposed to be reviewed by the Maryland attorney general's office and by the regents' seven-member compensation committee.

In Perkins' case, system spokesman Francis Canavan said, the contract was worked out by Perkins, Cotton, regents Chairman Nathan A. Chapman Jr. and then-Chancellor Donald N. Langenberg.

But regents say the contract received only perfunctory review from the attorney general's office because the system's main liaison was not available when the system office forwarded the contract with a request that the review be done quickly.

The contract was not reviewed by the regents' compensation committee before it was signed by Chapman, regents and others involved in the severance talks said.

Chapman did not return calls seeking comment.

Under the regents' new policy, presidential contracts will be drafted by the attorney general's office and will be reviewed by the compensation committee, which will advise the full board on the deals.

"There's an interest in formalizing the practices of the past and the vetting of the contracts," Canavan said.

Requiring a thorough review should have been the board's policy all along, Atwell said. "The full board should be informed about [contracts] so there are no surprises."

Perkins, whose academic field is psychometrics, a subdiscipline of psychology, arrived at Towson last summer from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He became the target of criticism in March after The Sun reported that Towson spent about $600,000 to renovate the presidential mansion the university bought last summer for $850,000 - a purchase the regents approved after Towson officials said the house needed little work.

The regents forced Perkins to resign a month later after conducting an audit that estimated the total cost of the improvements at $1 million - as the state was facing its tightest budget in a decade.

Perkins could not be reached for comment at his Federal Hill condominium.

In addition to dictating his faculty salary, Perkins' contract included favorable language in its definition of whether a departure should be considered a resignation or a dismissal for cause, which would have resulted in lower severance, say those who have seen the contract. This made it difficult for regents to argue in severance talks that Perkins should not receive a large deal because he resigned under threat of being fired, regents and others involved in the negotiations said.

Under his contract, Perkins' resignation would have been hard to characterize as a dismissal for cause, they said. That, and the fact that Perkins could argue that he would have earned more than $3 million over the next 20 years as a faculty member, played into the regents' signing of the severance deal.

"We entered into what I would view as a modest settlement, given the circumstances," one regent said.