Anybody know how much the UC system might save by eliminating ALL spending on athletics of any kind?
Followed by all spending on the direct provision of medical/psychiatric services, if any?
Followed by all spending on anything other than education and research and maintenance of buildings?
Oh yes, ending all irrigation and going in for xeriscape gardening?
And last but not least, announcing that the President was taking a salary cut to 250k, and that all workers, faculty or other, earning more than 100k would take a similar % pay cut until their salary was no more than 100k.
1. Do a google search - there are a number of articles recently about athletic costs - in particular look at the articles about the Berkeley faculty protesting athletic costs. Short story for UCB - mens football and basketballl are money makers that basically support the rest of the athletics, but overall they are a net loss financially - but at the margin rather than a very large net loss.
2. The medical centers (e.g. UCSF) are typically money makers. UCSF is almost completely funded outside of state of CA funds. If you mean medical benefits, well yes employees get them and they are rather expensive.
3. Spending on stuff other than education, research and buildings - that's a good question that I'm sure many of us want to know. Even the spending on buildings might be cut back - especially if we eliminated that unions but that is a can of worms. That said, I know that the facilities charges for renovations in my building were quite reasonable and that they are done in house with full time people rather than contracting out. Moreover one runs into the issue of competing with the private schools, see below.
4. I have advocated for zeroscaping and removing some of the more expensive landscaping. But again we run into unions - some of the earlier protests at UCB were by the janitors and grounds people who did not want to lose their jobs. They are heavily unionized. The ladder faculty are not.
5. I would not advocate for the president to take a 250K salary cut, certainly not at the chancellor level on the individual campuses. Those folks make no more than 400-450K a year so it would be half their salary - in some depts (for example when the chancellor is a science or engineering prof) it would put them below the level of
a senior faculty salary once you include summer salary on grants. Remember these people are often NAS members or NAE members - these are the people we actually WANT in those jobs - at least they understand the mission of high quality research, in general. Having seen what happens when you skimp and hire people into admin jobs who really have no clue about high level research - believe me you don't want that. Regarding faculty taking a cut below $100K - again I would say that you would lose the best people - the NAS/NAE members who earn 200K or more will have to leave because they could not afford to live on 100K in their current housing situation in many cases (or put their kids through school). By slashing all those above 100K - at least at the top UCs, what you will do is keep the high paid staff working at the same rate as before but cutting the faculty. Staff salaries are reasonably high - we have people in my dept with assoc degrees making over 50K/year (due to seniority, union representation, etc). One might argue that at market rate we could hire someone to do the same job at around 30K/year, but not so for faculty who are often hired with multiple offers from private schools (in my case I had an offer from an Ivy when I moved to the UC). In terms of grants/ recruiting top PhD students there is a big difference between having the top person as compared to say the 10th best person.
Bottom line is that the top UCs compete with top private schools for faculty and students and want to maintain their research stature. What becomes complicated is that not all UCs are competing at the same level so it is tricky how to manage privatization - which at some level involves the open market for students and faculty - when the different campuses have different levels of national and international recognition of their faculty. When the UCs had more generous state funding this could all become embedded in the system, so to speak. On the other hand, the cross the board cheap tuition is what has created huge inequities today in terms of admission rates across campuses (compare applications/acceptances at UCLA or UCB vs. Merced or Riverside).
One could also argue that the role of the UC should not be to compete with private schools. It would mean a complete restructuring of the UC - faculty there who can get top jobs at private schools will move out and be replaced by people who are not as strong in research. In science and engineering it would mean in the long run a market decrease in federal funding - which is highly competitive and goes to the top people. In essence, the UC would become more like the CSUs but with a PhD program. I'm not sure this is good for CA - certainly not for the economy which has benefited from high tech/bio tech industry influenced by the Univ. of CA. Of course I have to make the disclaimer that I am one of those faculty who could move to a private school but would prefer not to if we can maintain quality in the UC.
