Op-ed perpetuated misleading claims about UC administration
In his recent op-ed “UC funding fight continues,” Nicolas Kitchel rightly congratulates students for rallying behind Proposition 30 and helping to stave off crippling cuts to the University of California. But in his call for continued student activism, he recycles the tired and divisive canard of secretive UC administrators in league with Wall Street to “privatize” our public university and, while they’re at it, grant themselves lavish raises. Here’s where the maxim attributed to Mark Twain comes to mind, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
Management of the university’s financial resources is not only prudent and proper but so transparent that anybody with an Internet connection can read reports and digest the data for themselves. The most recent campaign of misinformation — what Kitchel calls “risky debt privatization deals with Wall Street firms” — centers on financing for three UC medical centers that saved the university more than $40 million without putting a penny of tuition or taxpayer revenues at risk. Sorry, but Gordon Gekko would have been bored.
As for the claim about top UC executives voting their salaries ever upward — again, the truth lies somewhere else, and here’s a hint: It is easily accessible online (http://compensation.universityofcalifornia.edu/). The reality is the top-flight talent needed to manage our system of 10 campuses, five medical centers, 10 hospitals, three national laboratories and numerous research centers — with an annual operating budget of about $23 billion — is paid well below what it could earn elsewhere. The university’s most recent compensation study shows that the largest compensation gap affects senior management group members whose cash compensation, on average, is about 22 percent lower than that of their counterparts. Union-represented service workers are closer to the market average than other UC employees; their total compensation (cash plus benefits) is 18 percent higher than that of their counterparts at other institutions.
UC students, and all Californians, would do well to become better informed about how our public university works and how, despite having absorbed nearly $1 billion in state cutbacks over the past five years, it works so well. Then we can join together to ensure that the UC system remains the best public university system in the world.
— Dianne Klein
Spokesperson, UC Office of the President
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