UC Studies Fee Hikes, Faculty Pay Cut : Budget: System chief Peltason says other proposals are being considered, but he warns that painful moves are unavoidable.

Student fees at the University of California would increase by about $1,045 next fall, while faculty and staff would face 5% pay cuts for a year under emergency budget plans being closely studied, UC system administrators said Thursday.

Although he emphasized that plans will not be finished until next month, UC President Jack W. Peltason said an undergraduate who is a California resident may have to pay $4,089 in fees for the 1993-94 school year, not including room and board. That would represent a rise of more than 150% over the last four years.

The UC Board of Regents voted in November to raise basic student fees for next year by $605. Gov. Pete Wilson’s subsequent proposal to cut state funding for UC by $138 million, or 7.3%, sent UC officials scrambling for other revenues, possibly including another increase of about $440 in student fees, Peltason said.

“We are trying to find the alternative least damaging to our students. But we can’t avoid inflicting some pain on every member of the university community,” Peltason said at a regents meeting at UC San Francisco.

As part of that shared pain, most faculty and staff would take 5% pay cuts next year but the money would be restored, possibly at retirement, according to what Peltason called an emerging consensus of UC officials. Softening some of those proposed cuts, 2% merit pay raises might be available to about a third of the faculty, he added.

UC employees have not received cost of living raises for two years. If approved, the pay cuts would be the first for UC employees since the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to William B. Baker, UC vice president for budget and university relations. Baker recalled that his father, a UC purchasing agent at the time, took a 35% salary reduction, “but he survived.”

In a highly unusual move, the systemwide Academic Council of faculty leaders voted Wednesday to support such a pay cut and to study possible increases in teaching loads. However, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young denounced the proposed faculty pay cuts, saying they would cause valued professors to leave UC for other institutions.

“It would be a signal that this a less attractive place,” Young said.

Also under discussion are layoffs for about 1,000 UC employees from a total work force of 133,000, which does not include the energy and weapons laboratories that UC manages for the federal government. In the last three years, 5,000 UC jobs were eliminated by attrition, layoffs and early retirement, officials said.

Baker stressed that a third of any fee increases would be devoted to more financial aid. Not surprisingly, UC Student Assn. President Tobin Freid said that such aid would be insufficient and that further fee increases would be “a door slammed in the face of students.” Freid said the university should first eliminate all assistant vice presidents’ and assistant vice chancellors’ jobs and increase professors’ teaching loads, now two or three courses a year, by one class annually.

Frustrated by annual budget scrambles and debates, UC regents said they will study proposed overhauls in the way student fees are figured.

Earlier this week, the California Postsecondary Education Commission issued a report suggesting such alternatives as a sliding scale on fees based on family incomes of students at UC, Cal State and community colleges. Under the plan, UC fees would range from $300 a year for an undergraduate whose family earns less than $36,000 to $6,000 for those with family incomes over $96,000. Another idea includes setting fees as a fixed percentage of the cost of instruction or linking fees at California’s public universities to the average in other states.

A proposal by UC Regent Harold M. Williams would go even further, setting UC fees at 80% of tuition at comparable private colleges in California--about $10,000 at current rates. The state then should fund large grants based on family incomes, he recommended. Such a plan may encourage some affluent students to attend private schools, relieving UC enrollment pressures, said Williams, who is president of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

In other business, regents angrily debated possible conflict-of-interest issues surrounding the proposed leasing of space in an Alameda waterfront industrial park for new UC San Francisco laboratories. San Francisco-area newspapers have reported on the friendship between Ronald Cowan, developer of the Harbor Bay Isle project, and Ronald W. Brady, UC senior vice president for administration.

Brady denies that Cowan received preferential treatment in the real estate deal or the previous leasing of other Harbor Bay space for other UC offices. San Francisco officials fear that UC San Francisco later may move many more medical operations to Harbor Bay, costing their city jobs.

In an embarrassing moment, a 1990 promotional videotape for Harbor Isle was played at the regents meeting Thursday and it included what appeared to be endorsements of Harbor Bay by several UC officials, including Brady, UC Davis Chancellor Theodore L. Hullar and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who is an ex-officio regent and has represented Cowan in legal matters. At Peltason’s request, the tape is no longer in public circulation. Hullar and Brady have said their videotaped comments were taken out of context.

Regents Jeremiah F. Hallisey and Frank Clark have been sharply critical of ties between Cowan, Brown and UC officials. Reacting to the allegations of conflict of interest, Peltason requested, and the regents authorized, an investigation by an outside audit firm of all ties between Cowan and UC employees. Hallisey, whose term as regent ended with Thursday’s meeting, said that he was not satisfied and that the issues should be investigated by outside attorneys, not auditors. Other regents accused Hallisey, who has been a dissident on other matters, of unfairly smearing UC’s reputation.

The regents on Thursday also approved the nomination of Walter E. Massey, currently director of the National Science Foundation, to become second in command of the UC system. As UC provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, Massey will be paid $190,000 a year and receive a $17,500 relocation stipend. He starts his UC job in April.