The University of California system is still hiring highly paid administrators and giving out big “pay raises, promotions, and perks” to higher-ups despite its financial struggles, much to some workers’ dismay, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Just last week, in fact, the university’s governing board hired “two executives at salaries of more than $350,000 a year and authorized paid administrative leaves to two former campus chancellors — one receiving $402,200 a year and the other $315,000,” the newspaper notes.
Over the last two months, it also upped the pay of a half-dozen senior administrators by as much as 22.3 percent and “approved higher salary ranges for several additional department-manager positions at UCSF and at the university’s headquarters in Oakland,” the newspaper observes. So much for the freeze on top administrators’ salaries that was adopted in January, eh?
Of course, the regents did leave “open the possibility of stipends and raises for promotions on a case-by-case basis, as well as increases to retain certain employees who receive another job offer,” the San Francisco daily points out. Paul Schwartz, a system spokesman, also told the newspaper that the pay hikes and recent hires should be seen within the context of “a pay freeze for existing senior staff, restrictions on travel, and a host of other cost-cutting measures here and on every UC campus.”
Still, staff positions have been axed, tuition is set to jump 10 percent, and enrollment may be capped. It’s little wonder that some members of the University Professional and Technical Employees Local 9119, the union which represents some 11,000 UC workers, are irate and demanding a halt on any hiring of administrators earning over $200,000 a year, the newspaper writes:
“We are very outraged. We confronted Chancellor Robert Birgeneau (of UC-Berkeley) today about it,” said Tanya Smith, the union’s local president. “The chancellor responds that this is an exception, but we have seen too many exceptions. The exceptions are becoming the rule at UC, and we have had enough.”
Update: Paul Schwartz, a UC system spokesman, writes …
In light of your blog item quoting the recent San Francisco Chronicle story about UC salaries, we wish to share with you this op-ed, by Richard C. Blum, chair of the UC Board of Regents, and Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California system, which the San Francisco Chronicle ran this morning. Perhaps you’d considering sharing it with Chronicle of Higher Education readers as well.
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One Response to U. of California Still Spending Big
ucucb - October 25, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Big spending,$3,000,000, by UC Berkeley Chancellor for consultants to do work of his and Provost Breslauer’s jobs. When UC Berkeley announced its elimination of baseball, men’s and women’s gymnastics, and women’s lacrosse teams and its defunding of the national-champion men’s rugby team, the chancellor sighed, “Sorry, but this was necessary!”
But was it? Yes, the university is in dire financial straits. Yet $3 million was somehow found to pay the Bain consulting firm to uncover waste and inefficiencies in UC Berkeley, despite the fact that a prominent East Coast university was doing the same thing without consultants.
Essentially, the process requires collecting and analyzing information from faculty and staff. Apparently, senior administrators at UC Berkeley believe that the faculty and staff of their world-class university lack the cognitive ability, integrity, and motivation to identify millions in savings. If consultants are necessary, the reason is clear: the chancellor, provost, and president have lost credibility with the people who provided the information to the consultants. Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau has reigned for eight years, during which time the inefficiencies proliferated. Even as Bain’s recommendations are implemented (“They told me to do it”, Birgeneau), credibility and trust problems remain.
Bain is interviewing faculty, staff, senior management and the academic senate leaders for $150 million in inefficiencies, most of which could have been found internally. One easy-to-identify problem, for example, was wasteful procurement practices such as failing to secure bulk discounts on printers. But Birgeneau apparently has no concept of savings: even in procuring a consulting firm, he failed to receive proposals from other firms.
Students, taxpayers, faculty, and staff are the victims of his incompetence. Now that sports teams are feeling the pinch, perhaps the California Alumni Association, benefactors and donators, and the UC Board of Regents will demand to know why Birgeneau is raking in $500,000 a year despite the abdication of his responsibilities.
The author, who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way the senior management operates