UC Officials Call Faculty Underpaid : Education: Professors are leaving at a faster rate and it is more difficult for campuses to stay competitive. For first time in a decade, there are no plans for raising student fees.

University of California officials on Thursday painted a picture of a faculty that is underpaid, fraught with tension over salary disparities and leaving for jobs in other colleges and universities like never before.

At a meeting of the UC Board of Regents, the officials also described how recruiting quality faculty was increasingly difficult and said that minority teachers were being plucked from the UC system almost as quickly as they are hired.

“Unless we can do more for our faculty, there are hard times ahead for us,” Regent Roy Brophy said.

The discussion of faculty problems came on the day that the regents were presented with budget proposals for the coming year that for the first time in a decade did not include a call for raising student fees. During the past five years, student fees have increased from $1,634 to $4,072.

The recommended budget asks for an extra $145 million in addition to the $1.83 billion being allotted to the system this year, with UC officials saying the increase should be enough to stabilize the system. Much of that money is earmarked for salary increases. The budget will be voted on by the regents in November and forwarded to the governor.

In his opening remarks, UC President Jack Peltason said salary increases rank among the highest of priorities because the system has fallen behind the pay of comparable schools by about 9%. The average salary for a UC professor is about $65,000 per year. Entry level pay is $35,900 per year and the top salary, excluding medical doctors and a few other professional categories, is $135,000 per year.

“A salary lag of this magnitude is virtually certain to bring down the quality of our programs in the long run unless we take action to correct it,” Peltason said.

Some of the most dramatic examples of what other schools are offering came from Scott Waugh, dean of social sciences at UCLA. He described how UCLA has been faced with several cases in which the kind of money being offered elsewhere to a professor was astounding.

In one, the school recently lost a geography professor to the University of North Carolina. The professor, who made $72,000 a year at UCLA, was paid a $100,000 base salary, another $67,000 for summer work, $27,000 more in various stipends, plus $7,000 for each course he teaches.

Waugh said he is now in negotiations with a sociologist who is being offered $167,000 in salary, a yearly $50,000 research fund and $20,000 for equipment. Waugh said the professor’s UCLA salary is $70,700 a year.

“Members of the faculty are not stampeding to leave,” Waugh said. “However, there does come a point where a rational economic calculation kicks in and says, ‘I am losing too much by staying.’ ”

University officials said the cost of living in California was a deterrent to recruiting faculty members, while raids on the UC system were becoming increasingly common.

“Raids by other universities have increased and target the best and brightest of our faculty and especially our minority faculty,” said Marjorie C. Caserio, vice chancellor for academic affairs at UC San Diego.

The regents were clearly alarmed by the faculty issue. “The world is filled with universities and this one is unique in its excellence,” Regent Dean Watkins said. “If we lose that, we’ve lost everything.”