PERSPECTIVE ON UC REGENTS : Trouble in Our ‘House of Lords’ : Insulardecision-making, hostility to differing opinions, emphasis on pomp--is this any way to run a public university?

University of California regents failed last month in their initial attempt to select a new president, when E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, declined the post at the last minute.

Inevitably, post-mortems have produced an impressive array of culprits to blame for the failure: the search committee for its procedures, the press for investigating and publishing information on the leading candidate and the Legislature for raising concerns about alleged improprieties in the candidate’s past.

But the failure of the search is less an aberration than yet another symptom of the regents’ declining competence, of their insular decision-making processes and their growing distance from the people of California and, indeed, from the university itself. Consider three basic responsibilities of the Board of Regents: selecting a president, fixing compensation and setting student fees:

* Appointment of the university’s chief executive officer is probably the regents’ most important function. Yet this is not the first time that their recruiting efforts failed. Three years ago, they could not agree on a candidate and had to appoint a compromise caretaker president with a three-year tenure. Will this happen again?

* In fixing the pay of senior officials, the board embarrassed itself and the university by awarding excessively generous packages for retiring administrators when the university was under severe financial pressure. Only after the press made these excesses public was any action taken to control the abuses.

* With perfunctory debate and little consideration of alternatives, the board has raised the price of undergraduate education by 134% over the past three years. During most of this time, family income in California was declining and unemployment was high.

Of longer-term consequence is the regents’ failure to address difficult policy questions. The regents themselves complain about the extent of administrative minutiae. But major policy issues, even when they do arise, seldom stimulate adequate discussion or debate. In recent months, only casual attention was given to important reports, such as those on the level of enrollment growth for which the university should plan and the feasibility of education innovations to accommodate that growth.

The substance of the regents’ decisions is, of course, more important than the practices and procedures by which they are reached. However, those practices are by no means irrelevant to the problem.

* Despite the financial woes of recent years, the university has only marginally addressed the issue of bureaucracy, particularly in its own central administration. A recent university report strongly suggests that the regents themselves are one of the causes of excessive administrative costs: $1 million a year is spent on staff support for the regents’ nine annual meetings, not including travel and lodging expenses of board members or security costs. An estimated 5,000 hours of staff time is required each month to prepare for regents’ meetings. Instead of being part of the solution, the regents are one of the forces responsible for driving administrative costs upward.

* The 26 regents (19 appointed, 7 ex-officio, including the governor, Speaker of the Assembly and state superintendent of public instruction) meet in a contrived environment of pretentiousness. Elaborate and intrusive security arrangements create a less than inviting, almost hostile environment for the public and for members of the university community who are not part of the official entourage.

The regents spend an average of $7,400 each meeting for protection by university police officers. Is a palace guard really necessary for their safety? During board meetings, half of the regents sit with their backs to the audience. Views on most issues that differ from those of the university administration are heard perfunctorily, sometimes with open disdain. This House of Lords environment is seductive--new members seldom question it. Too often, regents’ meetings are narrow insider conversations among board members and a handful of senior administrators. Too rarely are they what they should be: open meetings of stewards of a priceless, public trust.

In this context, the failure of the presidential search is a symptom of deeper organizational pathologies. The UC campuses still constitute the nation’s premier public research university. The regents and senior systemwide administrators should reflect campus excellence. Individually, many regents are worthy of the honor of their appointments. But collectively, they may be the university’s greatest liability. Even when the regents eventually find the highly qualified leader the university needs, he or she may find the office hamstrung by too much pomp and circumstance and too little attention by the regents to policy alternatives raised by the public, by experts and even by faculty, students and campus administrators.