Over the last decade, UC has grown the number of executives earning over $400,000 per year by 500%. Thy've also tripled in-state tuition in that time. And since 2008, managers and executives have been the fastest growing segment of the UC workforce. In other words, they're each doing less with more.
So yes, bad. And it gets even worse when you consider the socio-economic status of the people who are being expected to pay for the mushrooming admin layer. "Looting" is the expression that comes to mind. Only here, the people on top are stealing people's future earnings, as opposed to money they've already made. Moreover, they're forcing their victims to underwrite this unjust enrichment by making career choices that prioritize payment on egregiously inflated short-term notes over the kinds of decisions that may be in the long-term interests of students and society alike (e.g., a risky start-up with a long pre-growth lead).
And yes, "forcing" is a fair choice of words. The gun being pointed at their victims' heads is the very real threat of chronic instability (at best) if not outright poverty, which is a depressingly likely outcome for those who forego a college degree. And given the cratering value of degrees from cheaper but lower tier schools is no panacea.
Worth remembering: UC is not (on paper) a profit-making venture. It is an institution devoted (in theory) to public service.
p.s. UC admins can retire and start collecting pensions at at 55 or at 50, if they were hired before 2013. Added bonus: UC carved out an exception to the state's $110/yr cap on pensions. Depending on your salary, you may be eligible for $250k/year for life. Conceivably, this can go on for 40 years, which would mean "earning" $10 million for...breathing.
Presently, UC is spending $1.3 billion per year on pensions, and have been since 2010, when the state of CA stopped covering the full cost of employer contributions to UC's outrageous pension plans.
These fun facts are via Anthony York, formerly of the LA Times. He went on a whisky fueled twitter jag last night, and has more choice detail about the unrestrained banditry posted on his stream.
"Looting" is an entirely accurate description, and it is a fairly well-studied consequence of institutional structures that allow managers to pay themselves enormous amounts while bankrupting or otherwise destroying the organization they have been charged with taking care of: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/1993%202/1993...
The linked paper was written in 1993, and twenty years later looting is still going on, especially in the American banking industry. But it's happening in higher ed all over the place, as professional managers take over from academics in the running of universities. The change is understandable in its motivation: academics are terrible managers.
The problem is that academics have very different incentives from professional managers, and the checks and balances in university organizations have not been adapted to the new management, creating precisely the conditions of "poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse" that make looting inevitable.
Unfortunately, your facts are wrong. This retirement mess came about because both the state and UC stopped contributing to the UC Retirement fund in 1990. That went on for 20 years, until UC restarted it in 2010; the state is still not contributing. If they didn't do the holiday, the pension fund would have been more than healthy. Also, while older employees could retire at 55, the amount of benefits you get is dependent upon years of service (2.5% a year), and penalties if you withdraw earlier.
I'm a new UC faculty member (2014), and personally, I'd rather have a 401k as I'm uncertain as to how long this would be around.
Between 1990 and 2014, California has reduced state funding by 27%, while UC has increased enrollment by 43%. Since 2007/8, UC gets $460 million less in state funding. Finally, while there are many people at UC that make more than $400,000, they are mostly doctors (who bill through the UC hospitals), very senior medical directors (that are literally running billion dollar health care systems), and football/basketball coaches (who get their money from boosters). There are a handful of faculty that have actual salaries paid by the state that get regular pay of approximately get $400,000. At my institution (UCLA), there are only a few administrators that make above 400K and they are mostly medical center directors and the business school dean.
Anyways, I think there could be improvements in reducing the amount of administration, but it's not going to be the sea change you expect.
A lot of the salary and pension information for California public employees is available online anyway for people to decide themselves. For example, the follow is pages of people who make 6 figure pensions.
http://transparentcalifornia.com/pensions/2011/university-ca... I don't know of any 401K plans that can top these numbers.
So yes, bad. And it gets even worse when you consider the socio-economic status of the people who are being expected to pay for the mushrooming admin layer. "Looting" is the expression that comes to mind. Only here, the people on top are stealing people's future earnings, as opposed to money they've already made. Moreover, they're forcing their victims to underwrite this unjust enrichment by making career choices that prioritize payment on egregiously inflated short-term notes over the kinds of decisions that may be in the long-term interests of students and society alike (e.g., a risky start-up with a long pre-growth lead).
And yes, "forcing" is a fair choice of words. The gun being pointed at their victims' heads is the very real threat of chronic instability (at best) if not outright poverty, which is a depressingly likely outcome for those who forego a college degree. And given the cratering value of degrees from cheaper but lower tier schools is no panacea.
Worth remembering: UC is not (on paper) a profit-making venture. It is an institution devoted (in theory) to public service.
p.s. UC admins can retire and start collecting pensions at at 55 or at 50, if they were hired before 2013. Added bonus: UC carved out an exception to the state's $110/yr cap on pensions. Depending on your salary, you may be eligible for $250k/year for life. Conceivably, this can go on for 40 years, which would mean "earning" $10 million for...breathing.
Presently, UC is spending $1.3 billion per year on pensions, and have been since 2010, when the state of CA stopped covering the full cost of employer contributions to UC's outrageous pension plans.
These fun facts are via Anthony York, formerly of the LA Times. He went on a whisky fueled twitter jag last night, and has more choice detail about the unrestrained banditry posted on his stream.
https://twitter.com/anthonyyork49