UC RIVERSIDE: Top salaries on the rise

BY MARK MUCKENFUSS

Here are the top 10 most highly paid employees at UC Riverside for 2014:
 
Name/Title Compensation (base salary)
 
G. Richard Olds, School of Medicine Dean, $647,510 ($547,510)
 
John Heydt, School of Medicine Associate Dean $481,000 ($229,487)
 
Kim A. Wilcox, Chancellor $371,063 ($362,147)
 
Susan Wessler, Professor $356,050 ($261,650)
 
Yunzeng Wang, School of Business Dean $345,625 ($345,625)
 
Richard Smith, Professor $330,814 ($254,325)
 
Michael Pazzani, Vice Chancellor for Research $322,464 ($301,391)
 
John Fischer, Professor $319,764 ($212,625)
 
Chandra Varma, Professor $316,586 ($258,208)
 
Charles Gonzales, Health Science Professor $301,688 ($76,394)
 
The full UC report is at: ucannualwage.ucop.edu

The University of California is growing. And one of the fastest areas in which that growth is occurring is in highly paid faculty and administrators.

UC Riverside is sometimes outpacing the university system in that area.

Figures released by the University Office of the President on Tuesday show that the system’s payroll increased 7.5 percent in 2014 from the previous year.

The number of people receiving gross earnings of more than $200,000 rose 14 percent during the same period. At UCR, the figure was 38 percent.

Campus spokeswoman Kris Lovekin attributed the larger jump to the university’s new medical school and the teaching physicians whose university salaries are supplemented – and often eclipsed – by payments for the medical care they provide at local hospitals. Those payments are included in their gross earnings.

The UC data indicate that nine such positions were added at UCR between 2013 and 2014. Factoring those employees out still leaves UCR with a 25 percent year-to-year increase.

Lovekin said the campus added more employees than normal during the year in an effort to make up for a hiring freeze during the economic downturn.

The increase in more highly paid faculty and administrators is part of a trend that goes back at least five years.

From 2010 to 2014, the number of UCR employees earning more than $200,000 rose from 53 to 95, a 79 percent increase. That’s higher than the UC as a whole, which saw a jump of 60 percent. Subtracting out the 13 additional employees in 2014 identified as medical school clinicians, UCR still saw an increase of 55 percent over the five-year span.

During the same period, the total number of UCR employees increased by 8 percent. The number of UC employees system wide rose 9 percent.

UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein said faculty connected with medical schools and medical centers accounted for much of the system-wide increase in high-end salary earners. She also said employees in those salary ranges are a small fraction of the UC’s big picture.

“Employees who earned $200,000 or more are just 3 percent of our 201,000 employees,” Klein said. “The increases are primarily due to our medical enterprise.”

She said faculty makes up 81 percent of the category, many of whom are connected with the health sciences.

“Most of these faculty members are paid with clinical and research funds,” Klein said.

UC’s increasing push for top researchers also has resulted in more money from grants, some of which pay for or supplement salaries.

[Source]: The Press Enterprise