Facing the Threat of a Crippled UC : With Salary- Cap Plan, the Right Tries What Left Couldn’t Do

Normally no fan of late-night conspiracy theories, I have nonetheless hatched one that you might want to consider in the cold light of morning coffee. Last week, while I was trying to figure out what will happen to the University of California if the Gann amendment (Proposition 61) passes in November, it suddenly struck me that a real mystery writer would never allow such chaos to accidentally issue from the pen of a right-wing real-estate broker from the San Fernando Valley.

Instead, in the facile hands of Ross Thomas, say, or even William F. Buckley, the Gann amendment would become a left-wing plot masquerading as a right-wing crusade. It would be a program to cripple the university with the rhetorical advantage of making professors look like corporate fat cats and those that defend them sound like right-wing apologists. Perhaps an older and wiser campus radical planning the revenge of the Yippies? If this sounds farfetched, even by Southern California standards, indulge me briefly.

The Gann amendment proposes to limit the compensation that can be given any state employee to a fixed percentage of the California governor’s salary. Depending on whether the term “compensation” includes fringe benefits as well as salary, this proposal would put a salary cap of either $64,000 or $48,000 per year on all state employees. Evidently this limit would include the University of California sysem. Passing the high-40s ceiling would catapult UC out of the higher regions of American universities post haste. The low-60s limit would generate a slower, more selective ruin.

If the salary cap turns out to be under $50,000, most senior professors in the university system would take substantial pay cuts on the date the proposal became effective. Younger university personnel would face a salary future much lower than at competitive universities. Most faculty members who could leave for much higher salaries elsewhere would do so quickly. But even this brain drain would hurt less than the absence of top-quality new scholars. Instantly, top young talent couldn’t be recruited with this kind of compensation constraint. Already this proposal is a topic of interest and concern to young prospects.

But let’s assume that the ceiling is $64,000. Even at this higher salary limit the University of California would be devastated in selected areas and demoralized more broadly. Senior administrators, academic doctors, law professors and very distinguished scholars in other fields would leave the university rather than face large pay cuts and defenselessness against inflation. First-rate replacements would be impossible to recruit. And vectors toward mediocrity in one or several parts of the university campus quickly prove contagious.

What excites a conspiracy theorist about this scenario is that it is exactly the leveling of the University of California that many radicals wished for 15 and 20 years ago. This time, however, the assault on the citadel is perfectly packaged. Unlike the late 1960s, this is not an attack on merit, but just on what is defined as the privileged class in the academy. And even supporters of the amendment cannot be accused of intentionally driving senior faculty members away or discouraging young prospects. It is, after all, an unwritten law of American politics that people can’t be accused of intending the effects of market forces that their policies set in motion.

Besides, and this is the glory of the proposal as Yippie propaganda, it is not salary limits that will destroy the special grandeur of the University of California, it is professorial greed.

This is the paradox of partial reform: Half a loaf is not necessarily better than none, and can be a lot worse. Thus it might in fact be desirable to live in a society that had a top salary of $50,000 or $65,000 a year for all or at least for most jobs. But this is very much a different question from whether we should limit the earnings of only one type of employee. How a professor feels about a salary limit certainly does and probably should depend on whether it applies to the CPA next door and to the trial lawyer down the street.

And even if one could argue that top academic salaries are too high in the United States, putting limits on the University of California salary scale would put that university at a competitive disadvantage rather than depress the general salary scale. Academic fat cats, if there are such animals, will soon find alternative homes. The real loser, more deeply wounded than by protest or strike, would be the university itself.

The combination of superb high quality and public support has always made the University of California a curiosity of political economy. That its standing is threatened again should come as no surprise. The occasion for wonder is that the university’s greatness has survived the perils of populist politics in the past, from both left and right, and may yet do so again.