UC Board of Regents’ budget decisions are inconsistent, giving pay raises to some and cutting others’ salaries
THE RUNDOWN
THE ISSUE:
On Thursday, the UC Board of Regents voted to award pay raises to UC San Francisco employees and executives in the UC Office of the President.
OUR STANCE:
After rejecting the request for higher executive pensions and with a few professors working for no pay, we question the regents' inconsistencies.
By Editorial Board
Jan. 23, 2011 11:40 p.m.
It’s refreshing to hear that a few people working for the University of California do it for the students, not the money.
Two computer science professors at UCLA receive no pay for teaching undergraduate classes. According to a Bruin article about the instructors, Carey Nachenberg, a lecturer, and Giovanni Pau, a researcher, just love their jobs.
Two years ago Nachenberg was told that because of budget cuts, his position as an outside lecturer might be eliminated. But he decided to continue teaching undergraduates anyway.
Unfortunately, not all UC employees are so generous. In fact, many are quite the opposite.
Yet just last week, after budget cuts, consolidations, furloughs and Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed $500 million UC funding reduction, the UC Board of Regents awarded 10 percent pay raises to three executives in the UC Office of the President.
They also voted to raise the pay of about 1,500 UC San Francisco employees as the final payout in an incentive program meant to cut costs.
The rationale for the raises is that the system’s budget crisis doesn’t change the university’s need to compete with other top universities in the academic market.
This pay increase comes just weeks after the university denied 36 executives the higher pensions they were promised 10 years ago.
We’re not saying university employees shouldn’t be rewarded for their hard work. We’re not saying the executives should have gotten their way. And we’re not saying that everyone can afford to work for free.
But this board sees gross inconsistencies in the way money is allocated to different areas of the university.
Pay raises are routine, and the promised increase in pensions to the 36 executives would have required larger-scale policy changes, but routine pay raises are still difficult to justify given the current budgetary panic.
The UC employs many people in a variety of fields. And clearly, working in a classroom or a research lab is drastically different from working in an office or with UC finances.
But it is still vital that the dwindling state funding ““ not revenue generated from hospitals or other campus-specific avenues ““ be used for purposes that will more broadly benefit the entire UC. Part of the money going toward both the UCSF and UCOP executive pay raises is public funding.
It seems arbitrary that specific employees be rewarded for their hard work, when the budget has forced everyone at the UC to work harder to maintain the university’s caliber.
Executives can make as much as they want, but without professors, students, union workers and everyone else this system employs, their positions won’t mean much anymore.
