Is money the only motivation?
I keep hearing that administrators have to be offered extravagant salaries ($400,000 a year plus $100,000 for moving expenses for a chancellor) because they won’t move otherwise. This supposes that the only possible motivator is money, which is very sad.
Marlene Bloomberg
Davis
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=115745
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on Dec 13 2011.
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Yes Marlene, I agree. This is what capitalism does, turn everything (including people) into a commodity. We have to begin asking, is this what we really want for our world? Sad too, is that the end result of this system is the eventual impoverishment of almost all but the elite.
It is absolutely not true that any chancellor in the UC system, Katehi or anyone else, is ONLY motivated by money. Because if they were, they would be paid a great deal more than $400,000 per year. They might be paid $4 million a year, which is a very typical or even low salary in the private sector for managing a $3 billion institution.
This “extravagant” salary might be more than I get paid, but it’s actually less than the national median for chancellors/president of public research universities. When Katehi agreed to become chancellor at Davis, she was offered a 10% raise over her old salary at Illinois; in fact it was less than the chancellor at Illinois was paid. Ralph Hexter, the Provost, is paid less than Katehi was paid when she was provost at Illinois. There is nothing special about Illinois either; there are many state universities where the chancellor or the provost or both are paid more than in the UC system.
So the issue is whether UC needs to think of the other 49 states of the union — Illinois and Kansas and North Carolina — as some superrich arena that has nothing to do with salaries in California. Because certainly if UC wanted Katehi at all, it could hardly have asked her to accept a pay cut for the privilege of serving Californians instead of Illinoisans. A pay cut for an equivalent job in a different state is not usually a good invitation.
Conversely, even if UC ignored the other 49 states and only ever promoted insiders, the other 49 states wouldn’t ignore California. Most of the UC chancellors are already paid below the national median. If they took huge additional pay cuts, then they would have to ask themselves whether Californians are really such special people that they deserve the same work for, say, half as much pay. After all, California is not half as rich as Illinois; actually it’s wealthier per capita than Illinois.
The fact is that the issue has been blown out of all proportion, specifically in the case of UC chancellors and presidents. Katehi has been paid less to lead UC Davis, than Karl Dorrell has been paid NOT to coach the UCLA Bruins. Dorrell was quickly fired because he did a bad job, and still his severance pay was 50% more than Katehi’s pay for full-time work. But few people complained about that because it’s just less fashionable to criticize athletic salaries.
As Voltaire said, the perfect is the enemy of the good. People are aiming way below the top salaries at UC and way below the top salaries of chancellors and presidents elsewhere, to specifically target UC chancellors. Selective indignation of that sort isn’t smart in general and it certainly doesn’t help UC Davis.
Greg,
Your point about athletics is well taken, which then begs the question of why our esteemed chancellor wants to pursue a big-time division 1 athletic (read “football”) program in these desperate economic times. But back to your point. You make the case that other states pay their chancellors big bucks, so somehow that justifies UC to do the same. Isn’t this the same argument that leads to overpaid athletes and CEO’s? Why do we, as a public university with an obligation to provide an affordable education to California students, want to engage in this madness? We are not Stanford, with unlimited amounts of money flowing in to lure in “talent.” (which I personally believe there are plenty of qualified people within the UC and UCD to effectively lead). You also ignore the fact that California is a desired place to live and work – some people will take a pay cut for the quality of life. And $100,000 to move? – come on! What people also forget is that Katehi’s husband was also given a job in the Materials Engineering department (not that they were hiring, but if the chancellor’s husband needs a job, then make a position!) The fact is, the UC has lost touch with its overall mission in its envy and desire to “go big.” Rather than exercising frugality in these tough times, they continue to overspend, as was demonstrated in the last regent meeting when the voted to give huge salary increases to its top administrators while the rest of us suffer.
Concerning athletics, the move to Division I was Vanderhoef’s decision. The faculty voted overwhelmingly against it, certainly including me. Vanderhoef then said, thanks for your opinion, we’re moving forward. I agree that it looks like an expensive failure, but it now looks impossible to turn back. I don’t know that Katehi would ever have wanted the move to Division I, which again, wasn’t her decision. As it stands, the athletic department did cut four teams under Katehi. With the result that some of those students threatened to sue the university and a state legislator also questioned it.
As for this idea of taking a pay cut for quality of life, well that’s a nice fantasy that is even true every once in a while. But since when is the University of California so desperate that it needs to beg someone at the University of Illinois to come with a pay cut? There is just no sense of proportion in this thinking. We need someone to lead a $3 billion per year university, so why isn’t it good enough to take someone with a *below median* salary for that type of position? How far behind other public state universities do we need to be to satisfy critics? For that matter, the chancellor is already paid less than a number of other UC faculty — just how far down the salary scale does she need to be before people stop complaining about her one salary?
Meanwhile the UC Regents did NOT vote salary increasing for “its top administrators”. It voted salary increases for a few administrators, and not particularly the top ones. The only one at Davis was Steve Drown, the chief university lawyer. He still might well be paid less than some of the lawyers who sue the university from time to time. The regents didn’t vote anything for any other administrators at Davis at this meeting, “top” or otherwise. Again, the discussion has no sense of proposition. If ONE guy in the UC Davis administration gets a raise, people react to that as if EVERY administrator got a raise, which didn’t happen.
Greg, in case you didn’t realize, we are in a recession. The university is facing huge cuts. What do most people do when they are strapped for cash. I’ll tell you what, they don’t go out and spend more money. It’s more than just the ONE guy, they have been giving themselves raises throughout this whole mess. When was the last real substantial pay raise for staff? We don’t get to vote ourselves a raise. I realize its a drop in the bucket, but its the principle of it.
You make it sound like Katehi got stuck with D1 athletics because Vanderhoef started it. Ask around – its no secret that Katehi wants big-time D1 sports (ala Big 10, Pac12, etc). You wait – they’ll be after a big name athletic director, football coach, football stadium. When we went D1, you’ll recall that the faculty was largely against it, but the agreement was that if we went D1, there were certain inviolate principles that were to never be broken (no admits by exception, etc). Now Katehi comes up with the Dempsey Report which says these principles are not “compatible” with a D1 program. This is yet another reason why I maintain that Katehi and the top administrators have lost sight of our true mission as a university.
BTW, check out today’s NPR report about why public university fees keep rising. Essentially it is this – there is no incentive to keep them low. Now we can keep our mouths shut and continue this “competitive salary” madness and balance the bill on the backs of students and staff, and guess what – they keep coming!
First of all, I certainly agree that the staff aren’t well paid. Personally I think that the university is overstaffed, but the solution to that is to wait for enough staff retirements and then there might be room for raises for the remaining staff.
That said, it makes no sense for you to be outraged over some violation of principle that didn’t actually happen. I don’t know of any UC Davis administrator who gave himself or herself a raise. They get raises from their superiors, not from themselves. You are right though that it is a drop in the bucket. More than that, if we have decent administrators — people better than bottom dollar for the market pay for these administrators — then they will allocate the university’s resources better. That can translate to lower student fees and also raises for faculty and staff. So just attacking a few administrative salaries — salaries that are already below the market median and already below some of the faculty — when they control a multi-billion-dollar budget is penny wise and pound foolish.
As for athletics, I am one of the faculty and I don’t remember any promise from Vanderhoef about any so-called inviolate principles. In fact he wasn’t in a position to make any such a promise. And as for the Dempsey report, it was written by Cedric Dempsey and not Chancellor Katehi. That report can be used in more than one way. Big 10 and Pac 12 are Division I-A (or FBS) conferences and I haven’t heard anything about the campus moving from I-AA to I-A.
After correctly pointing out that administrative salaries are a drop in the bucket, you then contradict it by claiming that they are a “madness” balanced on the backs of students and staff. That is just not what the UC Davis budget looks like. Most of the payroll is staff payroll. Unless we make do with fewer staff, raises for staff would largely have to come from the students.
Anyway I did just check out that NPR report. They don’t say public universities, they just say universities. They could be right in the case of private universities. But I know from a more authoritative source, the Delta Project, that public university tuitions have increased because of decreased public support. That’s certainly the case at Davis. The total cost of undergraduate education per student, adjusted for inflation, including both student fees and state support, has gone down rather than up.