UC regents have odd sense of ‘injustice’
Woodland Daily Democrat
Nobody in California should want to go back to the years of recession and state budget deficits. But those difficult times did have one advantage.
It was easier then to arouse public outrage about the financial foolishness of public officials.
Now, with the budget at least momentarily in surplus and the economy slowly improving, there’s a danger that state residents will let down their guard against silly and shortsighted spending.
A new example came up last week when the University of California Board of Regents gave pay raises as high as 20 percent to several campus chancellors.
The regents must have thought nobody was paying attention. One of them, Russell Gould, said the raises were given in the interest of “correcting injustices” done to the chancellors. The board trotted out the old argument about pay hikes being necessary to keep the university’s indispensable leaders from being lured away to more lucrative jobs.
Here are the raises handed out Sept. 18. Judge for yourself if these chancellors’ old salaries sound like injustices: The three lowest-paid of the 10 chancellors got raises to $383,160, representing 20 percent increases for Santa Cruz’s George Blumenthal and Merced’s Dorothy Leland and a 5 percent bump for Riverside’s Kim Wilcox. Santa Barbara’s Henry Yang got a 20 percent raise to $389,340. And to top it off, the regents agreed to pay new UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman $485,000, 23.7 percent more than his predecessor was making.
The only vote against the raises came from Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In part, all of this was meant to correct what were called “internal inconsistencies” in the chancellors’ salaries, which tend to be higher for recent appointees than for the veterans. The board agreed to work on a plan for further salary adjustments to fix the inconsistencies. We’re guessing this means further raises, not cutting the pay of, say, UC San Francisco’s Sam Hawgood ($750,000).
UC President Janet Napolitano — who last year accepted a starting salary lower than her predecessor’s — got into the act by saying the chancellors “are paid far less than leaders of other public universities in other states.”
So what? Not to put too fine a point on it: But if those chancellors want to move elsewhere let them go.
It’s true that the former UC Irvine chancellor left for Ohio State, where he’ll earn $851,303. But generally, the argument that the UC and California State University systems must keep pace in the executive-pay arms race or lose their best bosses has always been shaky, dating back to the recession years when the number of UC employees making $1 million a year more than tripled. As one Board of Regents adviser noted at last week’s meeting, the argument that campus executives’ salaries must be kept competitive should apply to all university employees.
Yes, what about the importance of staying competitive in the battle to attract the best professors and students? UC Regents’ focus on rewarding chancellors sends a terrible message to faculty members and most of all to students, who face rising costs and higher barriers to in-state student admission.
Let’s talk about what students attending some of the nation’s best schools — indeed, some of the best schools in the world — are facing. Many students have gone back to college because they can’t immediately get the classes they need at the university level. Some student delay their graduations because not all necessary courses are available, putting them in educational limbo and adding to their costs.
Meanwhile, the cost of housing has climbed. Ditto for the cost of books and materials. Ditto fees to attend events.
In short, students are struggling to get a good education, which — frankly — hasn’t got much better despite the cost increases.
Anger over public officials’ high pay was natural during the recession. Two years ago, public pressure caused Cal State leaders to adopt restrictions on presidents’ raises.
Such pressure is no less necessary now.
[Source]: Daily Democrat Editorials
