UC Doles Out Broken Promises to Students, Princely Sums to Administrators

These are hard times at the University of California.

There’s so little money available that student fees have been increased and UC has had to turn away eligible students -- some 7,600 of them -- for the first time since the adoption 44 years ago of the California master plan that guaranteed admission to all who met the requirements.

Ah, but it’s not all bad news. It turns out there is money -- and plenty of it -- to raise the six-figure pay of top university administrators. No doubt they are the best administrators our tax money can buy.

Like the UC regents who set their pay, the administrators embrace the values of corporate America, which gives the greatest rewards and greatest credit to those at the top. Like corporate executives, the officials will serve only if the price is right.

True, the UC administrators’ pay is generally below the obscene levels of chief corporate officials, but like corporate pay, it is far, far above the petty stipends of their subordinates.

How far above? The university’s 18,000 clerical employees average only about $30,000 a year. Teaching assistants and lecturers, who conduct more than half of UC’s undergraduate classes and do other indispensable work, make less, in the case of TA’s, or just a little more, in the case of lecturers (average: $35,000). The tenured faculty members do much better, but even they average less than $100,000.

As for the administrators, consider Bruce Spaulding, vice chancellor at UC San Francisco. The regents granted him a raise of nearly 13% in November, to $245,000 a year, plus thousands more for housing, entertainment and car expenses, all of them covered completely.

University of California spokesman Paul Schwartz argues that the system had no choice but to reward Spaulding on such a handsome scale because a private firm had offered him a job at $350,000 that he would have taken if UC had not raised his pay. The noble Spaulding explained that he was “turning down a job where my net compensation would have been $100,000 more.... So I don’t feel badly about it.”

Presumably also not feeling bad is Marge Anne Fox, hired in April as chancellor at UC San Diego for $350,000 a year, nearly $70,000 more than was paid the previous chancellor, current UC President Robert Dynes.

Dynes too has done pretty well. When he took office as president in October, the job paid $361,400. Now he’s scheduled to make almost $34,000 a year more. That’s the sort of thing that has to be done, says UC spokesman Schwartz, “if we are to attract top candidates” and retain them.

What it amounts to is this: The University of California is buying administrators whose devotion to education can be measured by their demand for the highest possible compensation, men and women who sell their services to the highest bidder at our expense and that of the UC’s students, faculty and staff.

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Dick Meister, former labor editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, is a freelance writer in Northern California.