the Shit Just Gets Worse Out Here at the UC

I'm tired. I was going to post just random little tidbits of what happened to me today, but zunguzungu reminds me (with amazing pictures!) that today was the start of another round of rallies and strikes at the UC campuses.

In an experience similar to watching the world's largest anti-war protests before the invasion of a country even occurred (I'm speaking of the 2003 global protests of the Iraq war) I am disheartened by the demonstration that even massive displays of resistance by the people can have no effect on an entrenched power. Raising voices in dissent only matters if the state powers are actually willing to listen.

If they have already decided to ramrod through preapproved changes, from cutting classes to rejecting CC transfers in defiance of the California Master Plan to increasing fees by 32 percent (after the 9 percent hike earlier this year), then there is nothing we could say or protest we could make that would make them listen. And since the Regents are not elected positions, it's not possible to vote them out. And the whole problem is compounded by a global recession, state legislature stupidity, Prop 13, and bureaucratization. I'm left wondering, like Steinbeck's farmer, who can we shoot?

I haven't been going on campus since the last set of protests, so I'm not really in the loop. It seems though that most of the campuses organized trips to either Berkeley or UCLA to protest the Regents' meeting at UCLA today, and that further rallies and protests are being organized at all the campuses tomorrow.

Anyway, here are some links:

Check out this cool website UC Solidarity to see recent and future actions. While at Keep California's Promise, Richard Evans compares the growth of senior management to that of faculty, stating that we're almost to the point where each faculty member could have his or her own senior manager.

Davis and Irvine didn't appear to have news articles in their papers about any campus protests.

At UCR, a spokesperson explains some of the cuts that this 32% increase is supposedly going to help: "' We've had major, major budget pain on this campus,' Lovekin said. 'People are hurting. People are being laid off. The fee increase is the part of that pain that students will see. They'll also see the larger class sizes.' Other impacts have included a loss of 16 positions at the campus library, where the collections budget was cut 21 percent."

San Diego --- "Councilmembers are organizing bus rides to UCLA for students interested in joining the protest. About 200 students from across the UC system are expected to protest at UCLA and participate in the public-comment period."

A Santa Barbara editorial --- "The current fiscal crisis is certainly to blame for slashed services and furloughed faculty and staff, but these furloughs will be up for review next year. On the other hand, if historical precedents hold, this fee increase will never be rescinded and students will be left holding the bill. With the promise of an economic recovery on the horizon, we recommend the Regents consider a provisional tuition increase. Just as faculty and staff furloughs will be up for review, students would like to know that this 32 percent hike is actually a measure to deal with a transitory crisis and not part of a general trend toward privatization of the University of California system."

Zunguzungu also alerts us to this website about the UC crisis and the news that the UCSB faculty held a vote of no confidence on Yudof.

At Santa Cruz, it appears that they have occupied a building again. But that they only held it temporarily.

At the main rally at UCLA, the Daily Bruin quotes someone as having been tasered during the protest:

“The UC Regents don’t care. … They only care about their progress, basically themselves,” said Miles Goodloe, a third-year political science student who said he was Tasered twice by police. “And I had to get Tasered to understand that.”

A spokesperson denies this, but man, UCLA should not be pushing things. They have already had some major shit with this before, if you remember that youtube video that went around of the guy getting tasered for six minutes in the library computer lab. (I'm not even going to link to that again.)

And at Berkeley's student paper they have not only some great pictures but also are liveblogging the three-day strike, so you can go check in on it while it's ongoing.

Sigh. I was going to tell you that I finished reading and marking up my entire dissertation, and that today I did a lot of brainstorming about the introduction, but I think I'm going to be sad and depressed and go to bed early instead.

Ethos, Pathos, Logos, Crisis

Some of you may remember that I have a penchant for reading the blog of Isis the Scientist, mainly for her fabulous shoes, although snark and science are always appreciated as well.

It turns out that Isis and other scientists at the Seed Science blog are doing a fundraising contest with DonorsChoose, a nonprofit that helps teachers raise small amounts of money for their classrooms. So I clicked over to find out what the site was all about, and to see if her readers were actually donating. And I got lost over in that site for hours, clicking on project after project and getting more and more pissed.

It's partly because I am a softhearted sucker who can never refuse a plea for doing good, whether it be in money or time (seriously: I lost a lot of time-to-degree progress doing work with my union (UAW 2865), volunteering, turning out my department, organizing, running for office within it --- why is it that "if you don't do it, who will?" totally works on me, and yet so many other people are immune to that call?)

But my anger is directed at the fuckers who consistently defund and devalue k-12 public education, whether through No Child Left Behind or the nitwits who implemented massively unfair district funding levels based on local property taxes (fuckin' Prop 13), to say nothing of the asshole California legislators who think cutting back on education budgets that were never restored from their last slashing is a good idea. And add to that the perfect shitstorm that is California's budget crisis, which has involved such priceless moves as withholding Obama's education stumulus money to patch holes in the general budget, holding local cities' taxes hostage rather than letting them pay their own salaries, cops, infrastructure, etc., and bumping up the sizes of classes again, and you will see why I am almost pissed enough to run for office myself.

I mean, seriously ---- if you go look at the California teacher requests, you'll find people asking for paper because they no longer have anything in the school's copy budget. Or the elementary school which rations out only two pages a day of wide-rule paper to each child, so the teacher is looking to supplement. Or the teacher who doesn't have enough mutherfucking chairs in his/her classroom, for chrissake.

This is ridiculous. And shameful. I'm glad that this site exists --- it allows teachers who work in high-poverty districts to find wealthy and resource-rich parents, for one thing, who ordinarily would be giving time and money to districts that aren't nearly as strapped --- but This. Shit. Should. Be. Funded. This is not negotiable. It should be funded through our taxes just as a basic cost of doing business, like the idea of not having police or a fire station is unthinkable.

So I thought: hey, what if I gave some money to one of these projects, which one would I choose? And it wasn't long before I had the audacious thought: what if I set up a DonorsChoose page through my blog? Could I get people to contribute, even though I have way fewer readers than any of the Sciencebloggers?

And now we're back to my title. For compiling all these projects and funding needs from so many locations, all in one easy-access place, makes it into the ebay of fiscal need, or the wal-mart of underfunding (ooh wait, that's redundant, hah) or something. It becomes a space where all of these funding projects compete with each other for you, the "consumer," for your attention and money. And I was just clicking for hours, fascinated by all the strategies of persuasion, all the different ways these teachers try to move you with pictures and emotional appeals and explanations of returns on investment. I would love to teach this site in a comp class. I'm sure that people would be angry with that and see the act itself as a form of pressure on the students though.

And what would you choose, what sort of strategies are "savviest" for the consumer to employ with his or her charity dollar? Do you go for the poorest districts, or for a medium poverty district, knowing that those might attract fewer donations? Do you fund someone's technology request, since the teacher probably will never buy a digital camera or document projector out of his or her own money, or do you fund paper and school supplies because they are more cost-effective and are basic needs? Fund a book, or a segment of a bookcase?

I was especially interested in the number of teachers across the country who want a new carpet, either a section rug for a reading corner or just to pull up the whole mess and have new carpet put in. But that's something that is always lowest priority on the district's list (to replace or even to clean, believe me), is probably thirty years old, and is too expensive for a teacher to just dip into the wallet and get. (My sister in law teaches 2nd grade and let me tell you, she spends money in office stores and teacher supply stores the way you and I do in bookstores, or a kid in a candy store. Teachers always blow large amounts of their salary on classroom supplies and love to do it. I'm not sure you could get a teacher to not spend anything on books and shiny things for a year and purchase a carpet instead.)

I didn't pick any carpets. But I did make a giving page and stocked it with some reading/writing/literacy/literature projects, as this is a blog all about cats who read poststructuralist theory. Can I get you to cough up some dough? A twenty? A five? Want to fund a grammar project or thesaurus or paper or buy someone a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X because the school is making them share copies and not let them take books home? Or a chair? (Yes, I picked the chairs. I'm still pissed about the chairs.) Really, if you give up a couple beers or a week of coffee you'll be able to pitch in, no problem. The sciences are great, but microscopes and frog dissections aren't the only school activities that deserve to be funded.

Or perhaps you are not a resident of the late great state of California, or don't feel any obligation to help out its poor benighted residents who can't even pass a budget. That's fine, you YIMBY. Go back onto that site then and find your own city, county, state! I bet there's even a real-life school close to you that really needs your time and help. Go to it, people!

The UC Walks Out To Protest Fee Hikes, Budget Cuts, Furloughs, and Loss of Shared Governance

This web site, ucstudentwalkout, makes a good point about the budget cuts:

These budget cuts are not inevitable. Rather than accepting the state legislature’s cuts to advance an agenda of privatization, the UC should be advocating on our behalf to re-prioritize public education in the state of California. There is a budget crisis, but there is also a crisis of priorities. If this 32% fee increase goes through it will mean a serious blow to the quality, accessibility, and diversity of the UC system. And it will open the door for further fee increases in the years to come, which will systematically price out California students from what was once the educational jewel of this state.

And this sign, found at UPTE's strike images gallery, makes the point even more concisely:

This site has no pictures but gives a breakdown of activities on all the UC campuses.

'Naked rally' at UC Davis sets stage for Thursday walkout, reads an article in the Sacramento Bee. Uh huh. I would have expected this from Santa Cruz, but the Aggies?


A large crowd but surprisingly few naked people at Santa Barbara, with an article here.
Here's a news story of the walkout at San Diego, with some more pictures at this news site.
This news story on the Santa Cruz protests makes the important point that the campus's Child Care Center is slated to be closed because of the cuts, making it even more difficult for faculty, staff and students to create a work-life balance. I'm sure that moving from subsidized to astronomical child care costs while simultaneously dealing with a pay cut or fee hike is going to be real easy. Not.
And, of course, at Santa Cruz they took over a building. Or as locals would call it, that's what's known as "a weekday."



This site has a short description of the rallies at UCLA. And the Daily Bruin has a news story with slideshow. I can't link directly to the slideshow but it has wonderful shots of the whole day, with audio overlaying it.


Zunguzungu has some great photos, along with an explanation of the location's importance as the origin of the Free Speech movement, and links to coverage by the main local news sites.

As the largest campus population, Berkeley naturally can pull out the most people. No fair writing news articles about how the walkout is a washout at Merced because it barely drew a hundred people. How many students, faculty and staff are there total? PS more good pics of Berkeley are at this indy news site. Huge crowds and great signs!

Breaking: UC President Mark Yudof is a Major Douche

Reporter, NYT Take Runner-Up in Douchiness Contest for Crappy Journalism




Get a load of this weird Q&A with Yudof if you want to be annoyed. Not only does he come off as an incompetent, pompous asshole who can't even describe what his job is or justify what he does, but the interview itself does almost nothing to lay out the larger stakes for why he needs to be questioned ---- California's budget mess, the fact that the legislature accepted Obama's stimulus package for the UC and then took an equivalent amount out of state appropriations for the system, the fact that undergraduate tuition is skyrocketing while students are unable to get into classes --- as witness the four different students I met today who are enrolled but do not have a single class ---- yes! they are sitting around hoping to crash a class, they are paying full tuition for zero credits!!!!

Some of the more annoying passages:

Do you raise a lot of income from private donations?
We don’t do it in the office of the president. The focus is campus by campus: Santa Cruz or UCLA, or Berkeley or San Diego, Davis. They have their own development offices, and I’m there to — some of the things I do very well. I smile, I shake hands, I tell jokes.

Why can’t you raise money, too?
I’m out there hustling, but I go where the chancellors invite me. Otherwise they get upset.

You don't even do a good job at fundraising??? The campus chancellors have to order you around and tell you where to go to fundraise? Why are you even in this job? Who the hell thought you would make a competent UC President? Dude, as I have said before, I can smile and tell jokes (you might even get more money using me than Yudof if you squeeze me in a dress and tart me up for all those grip-and-grin events), I have a PhD and lots of experience in higher ed, specifically the UC system, and I would be UC President for a pittance compared to Yudoff's massively bloated salary --- and I promise to put the money saved when I "furlough" all those top administrators right back into undergraduate education where it counts.

For more infuriating links about the UC budget, you can see my older posts here or here. And I found another Yudof link --- an oldie but goodie --- that shows us that, hmmm, maybe he's not the best man for the job, if the job is to be accountable to the students and workers of the UC system rather than corporate interests and construction companies.

Walkout roundup to come --- and if you have campus pics, pass them along!

UC Profs speak out about the budget crisis

Heads up: there's going to be a huge UC walkout tomorrow, which corresponds to the first day of class for many of the campuses.

Here are some presentations I found on UC TV:




Catherine Cole makes an impassioned plea to students about the importance of UC's mandate to be a public university.



Alan Karras, a grievance officer for the lecturers' union, explains how the cuts have affected non-tenure-track faculty. On some campuses, entire departments of lecturers (like in writing and langauge programs) have been laid off for restructuring. "I know for a fact that there are between 60 and 75 fewer lecturers on this campus than a year ago. That's the loss of four hundred classes."




George Lakoff explains how California got to this place with the passage of Prop 13, which defunded public coffers and made it so that CA legislature needs a two-thirds vote to pass a budget rather than a simple majority.

And this study --- UC's Hidden Wealth: An Analysis of 10 Years of UC's Financial Reports: A Study for the Coalition of University Employees (CUE) --- has been going around my facebook feed for several days now. I'm not entirely sure how to read it, especially since it is from 2001, but it makes a case that the UC is playing fast and loose with the definition of "restricted funds"; the UC argues that large amounts of its reserves are restricted and therefore cannot be used to expand course offerings or fund pay raises, when in fact restrictions have not been placed on these funds by the state legislature or outside grants, they have simply been labeled "restricted" by its own administration. I tried to poke through the numbers on these slides and those of UCOP's, but am having troubles. I am seeing the need, if not the joys, of going back to grad school for a degree in forensic accounting. Always follow the money!

And I've got a protest to get to. See you on the flip side! (Wanna send me walkout pictures from your campus? I'll post 'em!)

Starving the UC Budget Link Roundup, WTF Edition

Everyone knows by now that the University of California is undergoing a major budget crisis --- at least that is what the UC leadership want to claim. The total budget for the UCs runs at approximately 19 Billion dollars --- about 3 Billion of which usually comes from the state and which the state is cutting down to 2.63 Billion for 2009-2010. (link)

As protesters at various levels within the UC, from students to staff to faculty, have pointed out, those cuts don't look like a lot when figured into the overall operating budget, especially considering so much of the cuts are going where they directly hurt students the most (besides the fee increases, courses usually taught by adjuncts are being cut completely and those by tenured faculty are being reorganized into large lecture classes. I hear things about how my former department, for example, is trying to figure out the feasibility of switching upper division courses into large lecture format with TAs, and eliminating TAs from the lower-division courses. Imagine, if you please, a Shakespeare course in the largest auditorium you can find graded solely by scantrons and clickers! The mind boggles.).

The UC administration, on its part, argues in a PDF titled "The UC Budget Myths and Facts" (I can't find a direct link, see the download page here) that most of these revenues are restricted and can't be transferred across categories, or, as it so bluntly sums up, "A federal grant for laser beam research can't be used to fund a deficit in the English department." As if English departments, which funnel large numbers of students through the university and have low operating expenses are the problem here.

Having drummed up a huge level of anxiety across the state for months now, garnered numerous national headlines and attention from all the major news sources, the UC --- lead by President Mark Yudoff, about whom I have ranted already here --- announced a tiered system of furloughs:

UC President Mark Yudof has proposed using the following formula to close an $813 million gap in state funding.
40 percent -- Campus layoffs and program cuts statewide
25 percent -- Student fee increases
25 percent -- Employee furloughs
10 percent -- Restructuring debt and other cost controls
Yudof's plan for furlough days would be progressive, meaning lower-paid employees would experience a lower percentage of furlough days and lower percent of lost income compared to high wage earners. Here's Yudof's proposal:
$40,000 and under -- 11 furlough days -- 4 percent of income
$40,001-$46,000 -- 13 furlough days -- 5 percent of income
$46,001-60,000 -- 16 furlough days -- 6 percent of income
$60,001-$90,000 -- 18 furlough days -- 7 percent of income
$90,001-$180,000 -- 21 furlough days -- 8 percent of income
$180,001-$240,000 -- 24 furlough days -- 9 percent of income
$240,000 and above -- 26 furlough days -- 10 percent of income
Source: UC Office of the President

These cuts and furloughs have also garnered campus protest, although not nearly enough. Is it any surprise this is coming over the summer, when the only students here are taking 4 and 5 intensive summer courses per session so that they can afford to graduate?

So I'm looking at this whole situation, knowing that the majority of the regents were appointed by our Republican Governor Arnold, and looking at the appointment of Yudoff, who some people argued at the time deserved his enormously bloated salary because he was brought in to do the unenviable job of being a hatchet man (hatcheting who, I'd ask now, because the majority of the top-level positions he promised to eliminate never got eliminated), I say, I'm looking at this whole situation and wondering exactly how much of a conspiracy is going on here.

Is this just a classic instance of the Republican playbook for privatization, or maybe following Grover Norquist's plan to starve the beast until government is small enough to drown in the bathtub? Was all this strategized out long in advance? I mean, I know Republican ideology is that only people who can pay for things for themselves are worthy of being supported in any way and that paying for services is better than public services, but this way of thinking is so foreign to me I can't understand why anyone would want. Especially for a public university system. Wealthy Republicans in CA who don't want the stink of public school on em have Stanford and USC in arm's reach if that's what they're after.

After all, no sooner did the Regents vote Yudoff his emergency powers (maybe this is the Bush 9-11 playbook) and he implemented these furloughs and cuts and student fee hikes, this and this were announced:

On the same July day that the UC Board of Regents cut $813 million from UC budgets - setting in motion pay cuts, layoffs and campus cutbacks - the board quietly approved pay raises, stipends and other benefits for more than two dozen executives.

"These are outrageous actions, taken at the same time as UC has been pleading poverty, giving layoff notices, forcing staff and faculty to take furloughs and hinting at more student fee increases," said library assistant Kathy Renfro, chairwoman of the UC Berkeley Labor Coalition.

****

New positions have also been created at UCSF - "chief quality officer" and "vice chancellor of research" - with potential salaries between $239,700 and $420,100, plus benefits.

On July 16, the regents also approved requests from other campuses to pay new deans and vice chancellors higher salaries than their predecessors had earned, on grounds that this was needed to attract the brightest leaders. The regents referred to the changes as "re-slotting," rather than as raises.

and then this too:

The cash-strapped University of California - forced to lay off employees, cut pay and offer fewer classes because of deep cuts in state funding - has now agreed to lend the state nearly $200 million.

Seriously.

In turn, the state will pay UC back over three years with 3.2 percent interest and will use the money specifically to help UC get its bulldozers moving again on several stalled capital projects at eight of its 10 campuses across the state.

***

To get around the problem, UC took cues from other agencies such as Bay Area Toll Authority and Solano County. With better credit ratings than the state, the agencies borrowed money themselves in the public markets. They loaned the money to the state, which gave the money right back to them to pay for voter-approved infrastructure projects.

***
Building plans

UC will lend $199.8 million to the state, which in turn will use the money to pay for voter-approved construction projects at UC campuses. In brief, here is how UC will spend the money:

UCSF: New classrooms and expansion of telemedicine services at the Parnassus campus and at San Francisco General Hospital. $32.4 million.

UC Davis: New four-story Telemedicine Resource Center. $35.1 million.

UC Santa Cruz: New five-story Biomedical Sciences Facility - $64.4 million - and a new Digital Arts Facility - $1 million.

UCLA: Expanded telemedicine services and medical facilities. $19.2 million.

UC Irvine: New biology, engineering and computer science equipment. $6.2 million.

UC Riverside: Equipment for a new science and technology building. $4.6 million.

UC San Diego: New medical training center - $32.7 million - plus expanded telemedicine services and new equipment for a music center. $1.6 million.

UC Santa Barbara: Education and social sciences equipment. $2.6 million.

If you wanted to be head of the largest and most expensive medical facility on the West Coast, Mr. Yudoff, why don't you just spin the damn things off to be completely private (see the dark blue part of the pie chart) and leave us poor students and teachers alone? You can run things as corporate-AIG-style as you want. But the true heart of education is the interaction of student and teacher. I don't see any difference between an 800-student lecture on Shakespeare and watching Shakespeare clips at home on YouTube. Oh wait, yes I do. YouTube won't cost undergrads 9 grand a year.

First Casualty

Not actually the first, I am sure. But Friday marked the first time --- and I am sure not the last --- that a student came to talk with me about the economic crisis.

This student has been missing classes, was late turning in the various steps of the research paper I have assigned everyone in a vain attempt to force them not to start it the night before. This student came in not to offer excuses but to explain her absences, give me a little window into her life.

"How soon can you get me X and Y?" I asked. "I won't accept the paper without them. They can be late but they must come in before the paper does. Do you have a topic?"

Oh yes. And so we talked about her paper, research, the course, and how she can get it back on track. How she needs to get all of her classes back on track.

"My parents are going through foreclosure," she said. "And they got this letter ---- and I'm always the one who does the translating for them, so I've been driving home every weekend and even having to go with them to meetings on weekdays too sometimes. 'What does this form say; tell the lawyer this; what are our options; what does that mean; what is the fine print of our mortgage,' " she makes the hand motions of tossing a stack of papers off her lap, left and right. "It's been hard for me to get it through to them that I have stuff I need to deal with too. They're really worried. But I have all these deadlines too, and I keep telling them that I have to get this stuff done before I can go home for break, yew knew?"

"And," I ask gingerly, "will you be able to come back, after break?"

She blows out a long exhalation of breath. "Ffffffffffffff. I don't know. I'm still waiting on that. I've been over to financial aid and the bursar's office and the counselor's and I don't know for sure what's up. It's harder to get loans now, yew knew, and my parents have no money. But I don't qualify for much, because both of them were working double jobs, in order to pay for that damn house ---" she shakes her head. "I don't even know why they bothered with that thing," she says.

I nod sympathetically, but I think of how strong the pull of house-owning is for an immigrant family: the American Dream. I also think that I have never read a mortgage, much less worried about my parents' payments on it ---- certainly not at age 21 or so.

"So anyway, the financial aid people don't take into account bankruptcy or foreclosure, and I've been maxing out my loans already ---- I work this shit job and the loans cover tuition and my parents have been paying the rest of the rent so far --- but now --- and I work twenty hours a week in that coffee shop and see all these other peeps working there to pay for cell phones and with their beemers an' shit---"

By this time my head nodding is constant, falling into a rhythm with her litany as if backed by silent techno music. "Dood," I say, and she nods. "Ya dewd."

We are silent for a little while.

"I've been looking into getting myself declared not a dependent of my parents, so their income doesn't count against me and I could get Pell grants, but I hear that so many people are doing that right now and the state just doesn't care; you can declare all you want but that isn't going to change your aid amount. But I've been calling private lenders and no one wants to give me private loans right now."

"The thing with loans is," I say ruefully, "ya gotta pay em back." We commiserate a bit more --- my loan amount, her loan amount, the thought of looking for work in this economic climate, whether transferring to another school so she could live at home --- if it's still there --- or taking the rest of her GEs at the local community college is an option. "Whatever you do," I advise, "if they tell you the class counts, get it in writing from both ends. I'm not saying they purposefully trick people into thinking the classes will transfer, but it would really suck if you were trying to save money and then it didn't go through." By the end of the meeting, I have worked with her on her paper topic and also suggested 4 or 5 funding ideas that she hadn't come up with yet, and at last she leaves my office hours.

And when she goes I think about how she had asked permission to make anouncements in class about _____ Student Group and _____ Cultural Night, how these associations will be losing a leader and active member even if she does manage to come back next quarter under increased financial stress, about what it's like to juggle 20 hours a week at work with a full load of classes, volunteering for outreach, and running several student cultural organizations, even before someone calls to say what's this pink letter they've nailed to our door? And I think about who is last in and first squeezed out, what color our university will be, what sort of backgrounds will be left here as this recession goes on --- their cell phones and with their beemers an' shit --- how she had originally planned grad school for an MFT or MSW but with all these loans that's probably not going to happen now --- and I just think: shit.

Hail to the Chief, Or, A Cog Makes a Modest Proposal

Doubtless you all know that the UC Regents have made their choice for the next systemwide president --- UT Chancellor Mark G. Yudoff. What you might not know is that the UC system is in California. And California is currently having yet another of its budget crises, with Gov. Arnie-poo proposing next year’s state budget with a 10 percent across-the-board cut. As Berkeley’s budgetary web site puts it:

The governor's proposal would increase funding under his "compact" with the UC system but then apply a reduction of $332 million, or 10 percent – the same percentage reduction proposed for most state General Fund programs. That would leave UC with a net state funding reduction of $109 million, or 3.4 percent, compared with the current year. However, it also would leave state funding more than $400 million below the level in the Regents' proposed budget for 2008-09.

The governor's plan provides flexibility to the university in determining the allocation of the $332 million reduction but anticipates the cut will impact student enrollments, student fees and individual programs. The governor's proposal calls for about 10 percent of the reduction to come from administrative spending and urges that cuts to instructional programs be minimized.

I don’t understand how increasing funding and then cutting it afterward would count as “upholding” the compact, i.e. the promise, he gave the university, but many people tell me it’s because I am not an economics major, so, ok then.

What I do want to point out is how brilliantly the Regents have enacted their plan to concentrate the cuts in administrative spending, or as the SF Chronicle puts it, “New UC president to earn $591,000, plus perks.” The only part they left off this headline is the “holy shit!” on the ending. In the article itself, they lay out the details:

His Texas package made him one of the highest-paid leaders of a public university in the country, with total compensation estimated at $790,000 - including a base salary of $528,860. At UC, his base salary of $591,084 will be a significant boost over the base pay of departing President Robert Dynes, who receives $405,000 a year.

In addition to his salary, Yudof's compensation package will include an $8,916 yearly car allowance, supplemental pension payments totaling $228,000 in fiscal 2008-09, and varying amounts each year after that. His total compensation package for fiscal 2008-09 is valued at $828,000, excluding moving expenses as well as standard health, retirement and management benefits.

The new president also will be eligible to live in a 13,239-square-foot mansion in Kensington with 10 acres of land, Mediterranean gardens and sweeping bay views - all maintained by a large staff at a cost of close to $300,000 a year. It's where Dynes has resided.

The website UTwatch has more information on Yudof's paycheck at his previous job, but it seems to me that this salary bump is way more than just inflation, which is currently about 4 percent.

Now, the Chronicle of Higher Education did a big spread a while back on compensation packages for top administrators, plus another article counting the numbers of presidents and chancellors topping the half million mark, plus another series on UC's past troubling compensation practices that were not getting spelled out adequately for a public institution subject to sunshine laws, but, since they are behind a subscription firewall I can't link to any of them for you. But I remember that all the campus chancellors, mine included, were getting cars in addition to their housing and gray-area raises and bonuses. How do they even spend this kind of money, with no housing or car payment to keep up with?

And here I would like to extend a generous offer to the University of California: dear Board of Regents, I am graciously willing to be considered as a candidate for UC President.

As a soon-to-be Ph.D. from this very University of California, with extensive practice balancing budgets and cutting corners on a TA stipend, exhaustive knowledge of how to push my way through the campus's labyrinthine bureaucratic system, significant experience lobbying the legislature against budget cuts and protesting fee hikes, and considerable participation in union activism, I feel that I am immensely qualified to be the next leader of this great educational system.

You might be worried by the inclusion of union activities in my resume, but to show that I understand how the economics works on the other side of the table I am hereby underbidding the presumptive candidate and declare that I am willing to take his package for only $100,000 in salary. Think of all the money you could save and pour back into making the university even better!

Not enough? Ok, if you keep the house, car allowance, and pension payments in the mix I am willing to work for nothing. Let the race to the bottom begin! After all, aren't the economist-types always complaining that every job should be competed over in a free market to determine its true worth? Logically, the Regents should want to get the best value for their money and hire the cheapest candidate. Aren't the Regents members all business types?

And look at how much this could improve our overcrowded classrooms! If a TA at, say, Davis, makes 32,782 a year ---- ha ha ha! My bad! Silly me! TA's aren't allowed to work full time and still have student status! --- that would mean 16,391 a year, then, if you take Yudof's "base salary" you could hire 36 grad students! Or you could use the whole compensation package and hire 48.1 grad students! (Where you will find .1 of a grad student? I have a grand plan for that as the new UC President and all will be revealed after my official inauguration.) Or, perhaps, give all the TAs a small raise.

It would make more sense, of course, to spread out these gains across the campuses and across a wider range of job titles ---- especially considering that the staffers, custodians and food-service employees are regularly paid 20 percent below market rate for the surrounding area --- or we could work on decreasing the UC's reliance on adjunct lecturers and convert more of them into tenured positions. But yes, I hear you when you exclaim that this one salary, grossly inflated as it is, will never stretch that far. But I am a forward-looking leader, and this is why I am looking at the salaries of the campus's Chancellors, and Vice Chancellors, and Assistant Vice Chancellors, and at all the top staffers up at UCOP. And it is why I am looking at my large group of incredibly talented friends who also did not get jobs on the market this year.

Beware, President Cog is coming. And she has the knives out.