The UC Academic Council recommended in May that the university consider a 3 percent salary increase — for both faculty and staff not represented by collective bargaining agreements — to maintain the quality of its faculty and the university’s competitiveness with other higher education institutions in the nation.
The council’s recommendations, which states the salary increase could cost the university $30 million, were issued in response to the UC Joint Senate-Administration Task Force report from February.
The task force report recommends first adjusting systemwide salary scales of faculty at a given rank and step, which is the level of a faculty member’s academic title based on merit reviews. The report also recommends shifting each faculty member’s salary amount, at the time of a positive merit review, to at least the average of their peers at their new rank on a particular campus.
The council advocates splitting up the proposed 3 percent salary increase into two parts, according to the council’s report. The first motion the council recommends applying is a 2 percent across-the-board adjustment to both on- and off-scale faculty salaries, which would mean the increase in salary would apply to both faculty whose salary is published within a systemwide salary of their particular rank and to faculty whose salary is higher. The second motion the council recommends is a 1 percent adjustment toward the two phases described in the taskforce report.
UC Vice Provost for Academic Personnel Susan Carlson said the council’s recommendations were important in order to keep up with other competing universities.
“The report was commissioned because the university was trying to do some long-term planning for faculty salary and we lag on our peers by quite a bit. Right now, our faculty are paid 10.8 percent less than faculty in our eight comparison universities,” Carlson said. “It really hurts our efforts to recruit and retain faculty that make UC as good as it is.”
But the UC Berkeley and UCLA Academic Senate divisions both strongly oppose the increase due to cost and inflexibility to campuses that wish to set their own budget priorities.
Richard Walker, a UC Berkeley geography professor and co-chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association, said the proposed faculty salary increase was a good idea in order for the UC to be more in line with comparable institutions.
He also said the salary increase should only be applied to on-scale, not off-scale, salaries and that university staff must not be treated as a secondary to the university’s functioning.
“The salary scale has been a fundament of UC’s success in recruiting the best young faculty, and it has been gradually dismantled over the last 20 years in order to offer high salaries to stars and to favored groups, like economists,” Walker said in an email. “This has been wretched for faculty morale, particularly those who are most devoted to this university and who don’t run around getting outside offers to jack up their salaries.”
According to council chair Richard Anderson, the recommendation will be considered by UC President Mark Yudof, but Anderson is unsure when Yudof will review it.
“Now the senate responses as well as other responses from campus faculty and administrations are being funneled to Yudof, who is at the moment waiting to see what the budget will be for next year,” Carlson said. “Nothing has been decided yet. He will take this very seriously, not to make any decisions until the university has the funds to do so.”
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Hey why not just raise tuition for the “rich” who don’t get any aid?
Excuse me but considering, all intent and purposes, didn’t faculty and staff just get a raise last year?
Realworld, you’re an idiot. Non-union staff went five years without any raises, and one of those years had pay cuts of up to 20%, and that on top of under-market salaries from the get go. Oh, by the way, staff in unions get automatic raises EVERY year regardless of their performance. Like I said, you’re an idiot. Realworld, get a clue about the real world.
A raise at this point in time sends the wrong message to state residents as well as those paying student tuitions. This just shows a lack of decorum and that some folks are out of touch.
Pension reform in San Jose and San Diego should have provided enough of a message I would think.
Did California just get a huge infusion of revenue that nobody knew about?
[“The salary scale has been a fundament of UC’s success in recruiting the
best young faculty, and it has been gradually dismantled over the last
20 years in order to offer high salaries to stars and to favored groups,
like economists,” Walker said in an email. “This has been wretched for
faculty morale, particularly those who are most devoted to this
university and who don’t run around getting outside offers to jack up
their salaries.”]
You mean the ones that actually have useful skills get job offers in the private sector, right? Lefties hate the idea of the free market, because it bruises their overblown egos.
Another legacy of the 20+ years of SACTO LIB domination of the legislature.
How’s your train deal going, Moonbeam?
I can imagine it would be wretched to the morale of someone like Walker if he learned that a professor in engineering is making more than him as a professor in geography. Of course, the real world is the same. The people with the most valuable skills get paid more than people with less valuable skills. Wouldn’t it seem odd to pay every professor the same regardless of their skills or contributions?