UC Regents Approve Early Retirements to Curb Layoffs

Despite worries about a massive brain drain from the nine University of California campuses, a UC Board of Regents committee approved early retirement incentives Thursday for faculty and staff as a way to limit layoffs.

Officials estimate that about 4,400 UC employees, about 6% of the full-time work force, will grasp the so-called golden handshake, described as being particularly beneficial for professors and staffers between the ages of 57 and 59. It will be the third early retirement offer in three years as the UC system struggles with budget cuts from Sacramento.

W. Elliot Brownlee, the UC Santa Barbara professor who heads the statewide UC faculty senate, described the early retirements “as a distinct threat to academic quality.” But he and other UC officials said there were no alternatives because the UC system recently raised student fees $995, or 33%, for next fall and cut most salaries 5% for one year.

In a controversial element, not all campuses will be treated the same in the early retirements.

After haggling in private, UC Berkeley is being allowed to offer somewhat less generous terms because that prestigious campus has a large number of older faculty in some departments. Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien so feared a professorial stampede that he threatened to resign a few months ago unless retirement terms were made less enticing.

At the other eight campuses, faculty and staff will be able to add up to three years to the credit they receive for their age and five to eight years to their service credit in the complicated formula that determines pension size; the same will be true for Berkeley’s non-teaching staff. At Berkeley, faculty will be able to add only two years to their age credit and six to eight years to their service record.

That difference, Tien said Thursday, would stop 45 highly valued professors from leaving. Although he declined to identify them, he said the group included a Nobel Prize laureate and several members of the National Academy of Science.

“In many ways we feel bad, not being able to offer them the sweeter plan,” Tien said. “But our priority was to protect the institution’s academic strength.”

The UC regents’ Finance Committee approved the plan unanimously Thursday, and the full board is expect to easily pass it today.

The golden handshakes are possible only because the UC pension fund is extraordinarily well-funded even though the UC system is starved for operating funds. A UC spokesman estimated that the pension fund will have a $2-billion surplus next year. The fund cannot be used to pay daily expenses of running the UC system, although some of the salary savings from the retirements will go to hiring some younger, less well-paid faculty.

Eligible non-teaching staff will be able to retire Nov. 1, but faculty will have to wait until July 1, 1994, to avoid disrupting teaching. Officials estimate that the plan will reduce payroll $220 million.