COMMUNITY COMMENTARY: UC system supports bloated salaries

This spring, thousands of young college students will earn a degree from one of the University of California’s nine campuses. For them it is a time to chart a new course in life. As they contemplate their future, here’s a career they may want to consider: University of California administrator. These types of jobs pay well.

Take for example departing UC President Robert Dynes, who will get a year off with pay ($405,000) before he returns to teaching physics at UC San Diego. When Dynes decides to hang up the mortarboard, he will enjoy his retirement pay in yearly installments of $145,524, or in a lump-sum of $1.2 million. Dynes’s replacement, Mark Yudof, will also benefit from the generosity of the University of California by receiving an eye-popping $850,000 a year to be president. What possible justification can there be for such a galactic salary, which is equivalent to the tuition of 112 students?

Perhaps a more fitting title for the new UC president would be the prince of the University of California, since the position includes extensive travel and entertainment budgets, and a small palace in the Oakland Hills. But Yudof will not be able to move in until more than $8 million dollars of renovations have been completed on his palace in the hills. In the meantime, he will live in another house in the Oakland hills, which the UC will rent for $100,000 a year, for living and entertaining. I wonder how many of our UC students will ever snack on bruschetta and chardonnay at Casa Yudof?

But the president of the university is just the tip of the iceberg. The university is thick with bureaucracy, a whole class of mandarins in nice offices making plump salaries and doing work that is largely irrelevant to the principal functions of the institution: education and research.

And how does the UC plan to pay for all these perks and salary increases?

For starters, they are raising student tuition 7.4% this year. That marks an incredible increase of 93% in the last five years alone. Would anyone argue that the quality of education produced by the UC has doubled over the same period?

The fact of the matter is that the UC can raise tuition because it knows someone else will pick up the tab because most of its students come from well-off families.

As for those students from lower-income households, the UC can count on state and federal grants and loans to make up for the additional cost.

My many years in government have taught me that whenever someone else is picking up the check, people tend to over-charge for their services. The sad truth is that most of the time that “someone else” is the taxpayer. Providing a first class university education costs a lot of money. But with large subsidized budgets, and few incentives to streamline operations, it seems like parents and students will be stuck with paying for the bloated salaries of UC administrators.

TOM HARMAN represents the 35th state senatorial district, which includes Laguna Beach.