x-posted: howtheuniversityworks.com
Bob Samuels is the president of UC-AFT, the union representing nontenurable faculty at University of California campuses across the state. Like thousands of others, he recently received a layoff notice in the wake of the chancellor’s assumption of ‘emergency powers’ (the academic equivalent of martial law).
On his blog recently, Bob explained how 3500 U.C. “fat cats” earning over $200,000 are living large while students are being turned away and the teaching faculty–most earning less than bartenders–are being terminated and involuntarily furloughed. Learn more at Remaking the University and the California Faculty Association.
For me the most eye-popping statistic that you’ve been tracking is the soaring compensation in the upper echelons at the University of California–what you call the “$200,000 club.” In the past three years, this group has grown by 50% and collects more than 11% of the salary budget for the whole university system.
Couldn’t UC address its financial issues by adjusting the salaries and/or selective terminations among this group alone?
Almost all of the people making over 240,0000 are medical faculty, law and business faculty, coaches, and senior administrators, and many will have only a small part of their salaries reduced in the UC furlough plan. The unions are calling for a 25% reduction of these positions. As we say, the UC needs to chop from the top.
By contrast, the lowest paid workers, including many of the faculty you represent, have endured austerity for decades, haven’t they?
Many faculty and staff have received no pay increases during this period; their labor subsidizes the raises of the highest paid employees.
You’ve called this a “fake” fiscal crisis. What do you mean by that?
UC has an operating budget of $20 billion and investments of over $50 billion; this was also a record year for external grants. They need to just move money around or share the profits of the revenue-generating sectors.
The new UC chancellor Mark Yudof has been green-lighted for the university equivalent of martial law– “emergency powers.” What is he doing with those powers?
He is imposing the furlough plan and allowing the fiscal emergency to trigger the layoff clause in union contracts. Who knows what else he can and will do. It is martial law.
Is this restructuring really necessary, or just desirable from management’s point of view?
There is a long-term problem on the horizon, which has to do with the pension losses of at least $16 billion, and the UC will need to require high pension contributions from the university and the employees, but this means they need more workers and students, and they have to stop giving people outrageous salaries that turn into incredible pensions. Many executives are given special pension supplements, which will cost dearly in the future.
What has to change is funding undergraduate instruction out of temporary funds, while everything else is funded out of permanent funds. In the current system, when there is a decline in state funding, they have to gut undergraduate education.
How will the administration’s actions affect California students?
In order to show they need more state money, the President has said that cuts have to be made visible on the campuses. This means larger classes, the elimination of many courses, fewer services, the suspension of requirements, higher fees (tuition), more student debt, the slosing of entire programs, online instruction, and it will take students longer to graduate because they will be unable to get the required courses they need. Also, many will lose their financial aid if they do not graduate on time. >
This doesn’t sound smart even from a sales and marketing point of view–how will the restructuring affect the reputation of the UC system and its ability to attract international and out of state students?
Right now, the UC attracts so many students, that it feels it can do almost anything and still be highly selective. UCLA has been the most applied to school in the nation for the last several years. It only accepts 5% from out of state, but it might move to increase this number since out of state students pay about four times as much for tuition.
How are the UC and CSU unions responding?
CSU really does have a budget crisis, and they have one union for tenured, non-tenured faculty and staff. They are being forced to accept furloughs for everyone and massive layoffs for the non-tenured. UC has many different sources of revenue, and the tenured faculty are not unionized. So the faculty and staff will get a furlough/salary reduction, and the UC has to bargain with the unions, but the UC is refusing to meet with the unions or answer their questions. There is major union busting activity going on, they have hired the top union busting law firm, and they are blaming layoffs on the failure of the unions to accept the furlough plan.
What lessons does the California situation offer to public university systems in the rest of the country?
Faculty have lost control of their own institutions, which are now run by administrators with no interest in education. Faculty have to fight to regain control, and scale down the administrative bloat. There also has to be a plan to defend undergraduate instruction and share revenue across sectors. Students also have to get involved and demand a quality education or they will be neglected. If all of the workers and faculty were unionized, they could create a united front, but now they are being pitted against each other. Tenured faculty have also bought into the free agent system, where they negotiate their salaries through private deals circumventing the peer review process, and this has to stop.
11 Responses to Terminating California
tridaddy - August 17, 2009 at 8:46 am
The first sentence in the last paragraph is telling. It seems to always be about absolute control, when I thought (naively) that it was SHARED goverance. Too bad for everyone!
mishch - August 17, 2009 at 9:25 am
Many of the UC’s “fat cats” are world renowned scientists in a variety of disciplines (you can’t possibly claim that most of 3,500 “cats” are medical, law, and business faculty only). “Moving money around” and “sharing the profits of the revenue-generating sectors” are definitely concepts that brought the welfare state of California to the edge of bankruptcy in the first place.
22024621 - August 17, 2009 at 12:49 pm
“Faculty have lost control of their own institutions, which are now run by administrators with no interest in education.”This statement destroys your credibility.
ewagner324 - August 17, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Why is it so hard to remember that running an institution and teaching in an institution require very different skill sets, have very different job requirements that legitiately call for different kinds of compensation plans.
greeneyeshade - August 17, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Administrative “bloat” bears a direct correlation to academic bloat.The academic enterprise is a Byzantine tangle of the “latest” departmental disciplines, institutes, centers, and complex and highly regulated contracts and grants that faculty who teach less and less, bring to the campus. And this modern day faculty teaches less and less causing large numbers of adjuncts and TAs to be added to the workforce (bigger academic workforce = more HR, payroll, on and on…).And none of this complexity poses new problems for administrators, problems that require more and more talented professional expertise to manage and support? Of course it does. Why do academics think they can build these incredible ivory castles that will just run themselves?
wmartin46 - August 17, 2009 at 7:22 pm
> By contrast, the lowest paid workers, including many of > the faculty you represent, have endured austerity for decadesCalifornians need to remember that all of the full time employees recieve health care and retiremement benefits. These retiremement benefits (called pensions) are now becoming a substantial problem for the taxpayers–since many employees are now making more in their retirement than in during their working years. The total compensation for every employee needs to be on the table so that we call can see just how expensive these people are to hire. We also need to have full operational audits of every campus every five years, to determine the continued need for every job on the organizational chart.> Faculty have lost control of their own institutions, which > are now run by administrators with no interest in educationThese institutions belong to the taxpayers–not the “faculty”. There is little, or no, evidence that the faculty has any interest in cost controls associated with the operation of these government-owned facilities.
regular_joe - August 18, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Whoever is writing these comments has no clue about what faculty do and why bloated administration should be the first place to look for cutting.
jesor - August 18, 2009 at 12:49 pm
>Many of the UC’s “fat cats” are world renowned scientists in a variety of disciplines But the UC system is a public system of higher education with a public mission. My questions are “do they teach?, how much?, and what does their expertise bring to the classroom?” If the UC wants to be a University then it needs to focus on the educational enterprise. If it is just concerned with building a reputation for having a lot of smart people and doing a lot of great research, then it should be renamed the California Research Institute or some such thing and stop faking out undergraduates who think that somehow that research going on in the restricted access building across campus is going to seep into the 45th row of their TA’s lecture hall.
mistreatedprof - August 18, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I am in total agreement with the sentiments expressed by Bob Samuels, though I have never worked in a university with a strong union presence … perhaps I should say because I’ve never worked in such a university!There are very sound reasons for shared governance at universities and colleges. It is a sad truth that administrators at many universities and colleges care about the institutions only as a business. They really do not seem to care about education. Most faculty — I hope it’s all faculty — really do care about education. I believe this applies to most faculty with a major research commitment and also to most clinical and legal faculty. The nature of the educational focus for some of these individuals may differ, but they still care about education. Shared governance between the faculty and administrators gives appropriate emphasis on both education and the need for universities and oolleges to operate within a budget. Both groups are indispensible.When administrators have too much power, education suffers and ultimately the institution’s reputation will be damaged. If the faculty have too much power, the institution’s financial state may fall apart. We need both groups … and they need to be encouraged to work together to achieve a common goal. Sadly, the administrators at too many institutions throughout the country — this problem is certainly not exclusive to California — seem to think that they can run an effective educational institution through the exercise of raw power. That is a recipe for disaster!
11293767 - August 23, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Mr. Bosquet is right on target. The critical comments to his article seem to have been written by the U.C. Administration’s “claque”. For anyone who has been an educator at the university level for any length of time, it has become clear that today’s university administrators are only interested in turning their universities into profitable businesses. Why else has the trend gone to palming off more and more courses onto graduate students who are barely older or more experienced than the students they teach? Yes, a lot of money is saved by this practice, but what about the students and their parents who pay enormous tuition fees at top-notch universities–and plenty at most others? They are there, because of the reputation of these universities’ scholars and researchers, and they expect to be taught by them. However, lately, this is rarely the case. I am a tenured full-time faculty member who must “pick up the pieces” of poorly taught entry-level course materials and unprepared students–the result of previous teaching by unqualified slave labor (i.e. g.a.’s). What about the economic necessity of “getting one’s money’s worth”? These students are being cheated by the businessmen/women who now run our universities. Another aspect of current administrative practices is the proliferation of upper-level administrative positions. How many of you out there are frustrated by the flurry of questionnaires and forms proliferated by these drones just to have something on their desks to give a semblance of actually performing a job? And then there are the committees we must serve upon, which have been formed to deal with some new administrator’s pet project!
11293767 - August 23, 2009 at 11:00 pm
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