Competition at what cost?

Editor’s note: This is last in a three part series about
compensation and salaries at UCLA.

Competition: It happens when there is a small pool of candidates
who have the skills to lead a university. And it’s driving
salaries up for everyone in that pool of highly qualified
administrators.

That has been the mantra of University of California officials
such as UC President Robert Dynes in recent years. But that
position has generated criticism among student leaders and higher
education researchers.

Dissent is often emotional, as salaries and perks for
administrators continue to increase.

Student leaders point to what they see as unfair executive
privileges in a time of increasing student fees and tuition.
University officials counter with the argument that higher salaries
are needed to recruit and retain the best teachers, researchers and
leaders. Current and former administrators say that in a complex
organization like the UC, the proven ability to lead is a valuable
commodity.

This debate has its roots in a shift in the philosophy of
university administration to what two higher education researchers
called a more corporate model. But the competition, they say, is
more perceived than real.

David Longanecker, executive director of the Western Interstate
Commission for Higher Education, said he has seen executive
salaries grow dramatically nationwide over the last decade.

At UCLA in 2004 and 2005, for example, Medical Center CEO David
Callender and Michael Schill, dean of the UCLA School of Law, were
recruited with the help of salaries that exceeded those of their
predecessors as well as substantial relocation allowances.
Callender, who was recruited halfway through 2004, was given a base
salary of $508,041 in 2005, while Michael Karpf made $441,474 in
2004 when he was director of UCLA’s health system. Schill was
given a $270,000 housing allowance when he was recruited last
year.

The university’s rationale for compensating its top
administrators has drawn sharp criticism in recent months from
student leaders.

Jeannie Biniek, external vice president of UCLA’s
Undergraduate Students Association Council, and UC Student
Association President Anu Joshi, have criticized the UC for what
they see as prioritizing executives over students.

Longanecker said the rationale doesn’t stand up to
scrutiny.

Competition for administrators has been bolstered by the search
firms universities employ to recruit their administrators, he said.
Such firms exist because of competition. And the search firms
““ commonly called headhunters ““ are compensated based
on the salary of their recruits. The headhunters’
recommendations for higher executive salaries are supported by
corporate members of trustee boards who think university executives
need to be compensated like CEOs.

But Longanecker said the view of competition promoted by
headhunters and board members is not supported by the evidence
about executive compensation.

“The business model, if you will, applied to education is
responsible for this change in philosophy,” he said.

Longanecker said he has observed that some top
administrators’ salaries, such as that of the president of
Ohio State University, have increased much more quickly than those
of some top UC administrators. He interprets this to mean that
top-tier salaries don’t necessarily carry the same importance
for recruiting good leaders at universities as they do in the
corporate world.

Mercer Human Resources Consulting, which advises the UC on
salaries, has contributed to the belief among UC officials that
highly qualified executives are a rare breed.

Mercer has repeatedly advised the UC Office of the President and
the UC Board of Regents to raise executive salaries in order to
bring them level with those at comparable universities. In a 2005
report to the regents, the consulting firm recommended that the
board raise executive compensation levels in order to better
recruit and retain the best administrators. The firm also ignited a
firestorm of criticism by suggesting that the university use
private donations to bolster executive pay.

But the need for experienced leaders gives value to the idea of
competition, said some UCLA administrators who moved up from the
faculty.

“When you are looking for someone to run a complex
organization, you want some indication that they have the
ability,” said Judy Smith, UCLA vice provost for
undergraduate education. Smith was a faculty member, a department
chairwoman and an Academic Senate chairwoman during the more than
20 years she spent at UCLA before she became an administrator.

Smith said the growth of administration as a career path at
universities and the presence of headhunters have increased
competition for executives. But the increasing complexity of
universities such as UCLA has also created a need for people who
have proven they can lead, she said.

“The scope of the job is tremendous. … You’re
asking one person to do a tremendously complex job,” Smith
said. “It’s hard to predict administrative skill. …
You want people with proven records in complex
organizations.”

To illustrate the diverse tasks an administrator must handle,
Smith described her experience setting up the freshman cluster
program. Freshman clusters are yearlong general-education series
taught by interdisciplinary groups of professors.

As part of that effort, Smith had to find funds to support the
cluster program, get those funds approved, set up training sessions
for cluster faculty, set up an organization system for the program
and keep it all on track, she said.

Smith believes seasoned administrators are necessary, but that
view has its detractors among higher-education researchers.

John Curtis, director of research for the American Association
of University Professors, said search firms and career
administrators have created the false perception of a need for
administrative professionals. “There seems to be developing a
separate administrative career track,” Curtis said.

Until a few decades ago, faculty would take on administrative
positions for several years at a time and then return to their
previous positions, Curtis said. But more recently, leaders have
begun to move onto administrative tracks, moving from university to
university ““ and staying for less time ““ as they move
up in rank.

This development increased competition for these individuals to
the point where today, many universities want a dean or a president
who has already held that position somewhere else, Curtis said.

In the 1960s and 1970s, some UCLA administrators did rise from
faculty positions and then return after their administrative
offices. John Sandbrook, UCLA executive officer of business and
administrative services, remembers that when he was a student at
UCLA in the late 1960s, the registrar was a mathematics professor.
He also recalls that William G. Young, a chemistry professor,
oversaw the construction of the chemistry building and spent a year
as a vice chancellor.

Now most searches for new administrators ““ from deans up
through chancellors ““ are nationwide, though some current
UCLA administrators, such as Smith, began their careers as faculty
at UCLA.

Some faculty members choose to become administrators for good,
but for some, tickets to UCLA’s administrative headquarters
at Murphy Hall are one-way.

Norman Abrams, a UCLA law professor who spent 10 years as the
associate vice chancellor for academic personnel and did a stint as
the interim dean of the UCLA School of Law, said becoming an
administrator can be a difficult move for a faculty member ““
and one that can be difficult to reverse.

Faculty members who become administrators often have to give up
their research and teaching, and they see their relationships with
their colleagues change, Abrams said.

“When someone moves across the street (to Murphy Hall),
one sort of changes in the eyes of one’s colleagues, and all
of a sudden there is a distance that didn’t exist
before,” he said.

But despite the varied elements that contribute to competition,
student leaders don’t buy into the argument that it is
necessary.

Biniek said that regardless of the justifications for increasing
executive compensation, for her the issue is a question of
accessibility.

“It comes down to the fact that students are being
expected to contribute more and more to the cost of their education
at a public university,” Biniek said. “No matter what
the justification is for paying these high salaries, they are
rather high, and when students keep seeing their fees increase, it
is a problem.”