UC Regents to Review Pay for Top Officials

University of California regents pledged Monday to improve their oversight of the system’s executive compensation practices, amid pressure from faculty and legislators to justify pay and benefits to administrators.

Board of Regents Chairman Gerald L. Parsky said the panel will form a compensation committee to keep better tabs on such spending, assign an outside audit of senior managers’ compensation and name a task force to review UC pay policies and practices.

“We are committed to public access, awareness and understanding” of regents’ actions, Parsky, a Los Angeles lawyer and investor, said in a telephone conference call with reporters.

A group of UC Berkeley and UCLA professors last month petitioned Parsky to name an independent investigator to probe pay issues.

Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor who helped organize the petition drive, said the measures announced Monday addressed “90% of what the faculty was asking for.” He said he hoped the audit and task force would “get to the bottom of who inside the bureaucracy is making questionable decisions about compensation and perks.”

Recent reports in the San Francisco Chronicle noted that the university has spent millions on bonuses, moving expenses, and stipends to administrators, while raising student fees for five straight years.

The task force will be led by former state Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg and UC Regent Joanne C. Kozberg. Its members are former state Sen. Dede Alpert of San Diego; UCLA biology professor Clifford Brunk; former University of Michigan President James J. Duderstadt; B. Kipling Hagopian, managing partner of investment firm Apple Oaks Partners; USC professor and former San Jose Mercury News publisher Jay T. Harris; Regent Monica C. Lozano, president of La Opinion newspaper; and James E. Morley Jr., president and chief executive of the National Assn. of College and University Business Officers.

On Saturday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) said he asked the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to audit the university’s compensation practices. “It’s painfully obvious that the University of California, one of our state’s most respected institutions, needs to enhance the transparency and disclosure of its compensation system,” he said.

Nunez has also called for hearings next year into the university system’s pay practices.

“We welcome that,” Parsky said. “I think the speaker has the best interests of the university at heart.”

Parsky also said the regents reluctantly raised fees and want to rescind the increases if funds become available.

University officials and regents have said that generous pay and benefits are necessary to attract top talent to the university.

Fuller said such explanations have not convinced professors like him, who fear “the university will become one that serves only elite families who can afford it. Meanwhile precious resources have been skimmed and given to mid-level bureaucrats.”