The Symbolism of Flying Coach : Administrators of state-funded universities must see realities of hard times

Politicians want to be against what everyone is against. That’s how they get elected: by promising to be leaders who will follow. But once in a while, they get in trouble by trying to follow in two directions at once.

“Three strikes and you’re out” is a case in point. This is a law that will cost California, in money out of pocket, astronomical sums. Where will the money come from? Higher education is the only major item of discretionary spending left in California’s budget. Either higher education goes down or taxes go up. Politicians who want to be pro-”three strikes” and anti-tax have got to be anti-higher education. It’s that simple, and don’t think the politicians haven’t noticed.

Needless to say, nobody can be against higher education as such. The political trick is to attack wretched excesses of one sort or another in higher education: trivial research, leisurely professorial lifestyles and so forth.

The case perennially in point is the compensation of administrators. How big a part of the University of California’s budget consists of top administrators’ salaries? One way to answer is to go to the most extreme estimate anyone has ever offered of how much money could be cut from every critic’s favorite example of bloat: UC systemwide administration. Budget gadfly Charles Schwartz says $200 million to $300 million could be saved. But the full annual UC budget is $9.4 billion.

The university is not going to make or break its budget by what happens in the administrative salary category. That said, it has been folly for top administrators both at the University of California and the California State University not to recognize the symbolic importance of big raises and luxurious paid leaves for administrators. It serves too many politicians’ purposes too well to portray higher education as one gigantic paid leave. In pure self-defense, UC President Jack W. Peltason, who has now ended the practice of paid leave, should have done so without being put under public pressure. The practice may be defensible as a way to attract the managerial talent needed to run a $9.4-billion operation. But in the post-”three strikes” budget climate, continuing it was institutionally suicidal.