The University of California‘s PR problem over compensation packages given to high-ranking employees doesn’t seem to be going away.  And it shouldn’t.  UC officials continue to give weak answers about why some employees have received such bloated compensation packages and why the public hasn’t been fully informed about the deals. 

Senator Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) held a hearing last week on the issue and will hold another one on Feb. 22.  In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, the legislator says that UC President Robert Dynes has yet not provided clear answers to questions about UC employee compensation packages.

Here are just a few couple of the excesses discovered (as reported by the Chronicle):

-UC officials neglected to tell the regents that M.R.C. Greenwood had been promised 15 months of paid leave at her administrative salary ($25,153 a month) when the board was asked to approve her appointment as provost in 2004.  The University also gave Greenwood $125,000 faculty housing allowance when she was hired as provost to help move from Santa Cruz to Oakland. 

Housing allowances are common practice in the private sector when employees are moved from smaller, less expensive markets to big, expensive metropolitan locations.  It would be understandable to give housing assistance to a new employee moving from Iowa to the Bay Area.  But if there is a difference in housing costs between Santa Cruz and Oakland, Santa Cruz is more expensive!

-One of the most offensive examples of the UC pay excess is the yearlong granted to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl when he resigned in 2004.  He was paid $355,000 in taxpayer dollars for a 13 month leave, with the understanding that he would return to UC to teach for at least one year.  But in January, Berdahl announced that he was quitting UC, after only teaching one semester.  Common sense would tell you that he would have to pay back some of the money he was given for the leave since he didn’t honor his contract.  Not at UC!  UC officials granted Berdahl an exception (basically a gift of $237,000) because they think his new position will benefit the University.  This spring, Berdahl will become president of the Association of American Universities, a non-profit group which represents public and private research universities.

UC supposedly stopped granting one-year paid leaves to administrators in 1994.  But clearly, officials just ignored the new policy and continued to grant the leaves.  They defend the policy by saying that administrators need time to ease back into teaching jobs, which is just plain silly.  If private universities want waste their money in this manner, let them.  But as tuition continues to go up and UC campuses get harder and harder for kids to gain entry, we don’t need to be wasting taxpayer money to give executives hundreds of thousands of dollars to help ease their way back into teaching. 

Legislative Note:  Maldonado has introduced SB 1181, the Higher Education Compensation Transparency and Accountability Act. Maldonado’s bill would require the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) an independent and unbiased third party, to produce a bi-annual report on academic salaries, as they have done in the past. The legislation would also require that the University of California, California State University and Community College systems provide CPEC with the necessary information for an accurate study on total compensation for executive and senior level positions, including but not limited to salary, cash remunerations, benefits and perquisites.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.