Forget the Pay Raise

On Saturday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that next week UC President Robert Dynes will propose UC salary raises in the tens of thousands for UC chancellors. The raises, which will cost $300,000 in the current academic year, is estimated to increase Chancellor Robert Birgenau’s current salary of $412,000 by $70,000.

Right now the university system is struggling to keep up with its private school counterparts, which have lured many esteemed faculty members away from UC schools with higher salaries. Ideally, the university would be able to offer lucrative salaries to well-qualified administrators as an incentive to draw skillful individuals to lead the UC campuses.

However, Dynes’s proposal comes at the worst possible time, when the state budget is already stretched at its maximum capacity: According to state sen. Leland Yee, the governor is asking all departments to cut 10 percent of their budgets. In light of this broader economic situation, the university simply cannot afford to hand out more money to the chancellors. If anything, priority of increasing staff salaries should be directed at faculty members, not chancellors. Faculty, who along with students, form the backbone of this university system and have the draw factor for prospective students and funding that chancellors do not possess.

Idealistically, talented individuals would recognize the great need for public universities and accept a lower pay rate in order to help an important cause. While that realistically will not occur, the university system can also capitalize on its rich history and research reputation. Other private schools may be able to offer a higher salary, but being a chancellor at a UC school like UC Berkeley comes with a prestige that can’t be bought, a prestige that must be remembered as one mostly owed to students and faculty members.