Hey, students: It’s all about tuition
By Walter S. Leal
It’s a shame that five weeks after the disturbing pepper-spray incident on the UC Davis campus — an incident that caused so much consternation to students, staff, faculty, administration and the public at large — the discourse is losing focus.
As I understand it, the students set up encampments on the Quad and later at Dutton Hall to protest the ever-increasing cost of education in a public university. However, subsequent discussions about the protests are all over the map, ranging from concentration of wealth in the United States to the chancellor’s compensation to the appointment of an Advisory Board, and even to the identification procedures to enter the main administration building.
Somehow or another, Chancellor Linda Katehi remains the culprit in all the discussions. This should not be the case. The arguments are being misdirected; the discourse should remain focused on the cost of higher education.
Students, please help us help you by doing this: Remain focused. It’s about tuition, tuition, tuition. Why so much noise about her salary? It is pointless to attack the chancellor’s compensation. If it’s not Linda Katehi, some other UC Davis chancellor will make that much money or more.
In the interest of full disclosure for those outside of campus who may not know how the university system works, I’m a tenured faculty member so there is little Katehi can do for or against me as long I fulfill my duties. However, I would be a beneficiary of lower tuition.
Yes, reducing or at least freezing tuition is important for professors, too. The public may not know that in many fields, particularly in life sciences, professors are expected to generate extramural resources to cover tuition, fees and stipend for graduate students. We charge these costs to grants that are funded for three to five years.
So, every tuition increase is a nightmare for us, too, because we’ve promised to fund students. Our grants have a fixed dollar amount and are so lean that it is difficult to find room for rebudgeting.
Back to Katehi’s salary. I already expressed my opinion about Katehi’s leadership in letters published in The Davis Enterprise, including one co-signed by 271 faculty members. Additionally, I signed a petition for a vote expressing confidence on the chancellor’s leadership by the Davis Division of the Academic Senate — the official voice of the faculty. So, let me concentrate here on compensation.
First, let’s remember that she holds the position with the highest responsibility on campus. Yet, she is not even close to the top tier of salaries at UC Davis. Secondly, the chancellor brings so much luster to the campus that in less than two years she was able to generate $750 million in endowment.
The generosity of the alumni and other donors will exert a strong influence on campus through generations to come. They decided to write the checks, because they believe in Katehi’s vision and her plans to place us among the top five public universities in the nation. And, by the way, we are already among the top seven, a considerable improvement in the past two years.
What has this to do with Katehi’s compensation? Everything. Even for those who may not be able to see her accomplishments, the endowment is a tangible one. Every year this endowment will generate a cash flow in excess of $30 million, even considering a low return of 4 percent. This is equivalent to 75 years of Katehi’s salary.
Likewise, the revenues generated by the higher-paying jobs at UC Davis outweigh their cost. The point: High-paying jobs are not causing the tuition increase. On the contrary, we need more of them to alleviate the running cost of higher education.
I don’t want to single out anyone to emphasize my point, so let me use mine, although I am just a “little professor.” Only one of my five grants brings to campus twice as much of my salary yearly. Some of the grant money goes to pay part of my salary, student stipends, postdoctoral student salaries, tuition and fees. Approximately 50 percent goes to the university, and a certain percentage goes directly back to Sacramento, plus taxes. Those examples are just part of the accounting.
And I forgot to mention that I teach, publish, represent the university throughout the world in scientific meetings and research panels, and generate patents for the university.
As I said, I am a “little professor.” The research programs of some of my distinguished colleagues at UC Davis generate 10 times more funds than I do. And none of us is even close to the top tier salaries at UC Davis. Most of the high-paying jobs are in the health system, but it is also the School of Medice that contributes to the UCD budget with almost four times state funds.
Katehi and even those collecting the highest paychecks at UC Davis may not be in the so-called top 1 percent. Do you want the wealthy to pay more taxes? Tell your congressman, not Katehi. After all, when she moved here, Proposition 13 and all maladies of our economy were already in place.
As opposed to physical and life sciences, in humanities and social sciences grants are not the main currency, although some colleagues have grants to funds their research programs and graduate students. It is their scholarship that brings more stature to the campus. And it is the presence of a scholar of Katehi’s caliber at the helm of the UC Davis campus that helps attract and retain outstanding scholars, and motivates donors to contribute to the future of UC Davis.
Bottom line: Let’s target tuition. Anything else and we’re focusing on the wrong target.
— Walter S. Leal of Davis is a professor of entomology at UC Davis. Reach him at wsleal@ucdavis.edu
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=117878
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on Dec 22 2011.
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Prof. Leal says “Somehow or another, Chancellor Linda Katehi remains the culprit.” The language implies there is no good reason for that viewpoint. There is. A week or so after violent police-student confrontations took place at Berkeley, the Chancellor made the decision to send police to remove Davis students from the Quad. The result was the pepper-spraying which has brought international shame to UCD. The Chancellor should be accountable for this terrible decision.
It’s not all about tuition, another overlooked point. How is is possible that the UC Davis Police are allowed to administer onto and into a student something that is UN-regulated or approved by the FDA? Something that even a Doctor can not do?
Dear Dr. Leal — The student protest against higher tuition is also a part of the Occupy movement which is a protest about the growing economic inequality in our country and against a society that continues to let this happen. Higher tuition makes it even more difficult for low income students to attend college and ultimately earn decent salaries, which again, exacerbates the growing economic inequality in our country. Katehi and her salary are included in the protest because she is representative of this phenomenon – her salary is a high percentage above her predecessors and together with her husband (who makes a $150,000) their family income is $550,000 plus free housing. They are symbols of the growing economic inequality in our society.
Rising tuition is important and it is focus of the student protest, but it is indicative of other changes that are happening — students are aware of this and it is the wider societal issues that they are concerned with as well as their own payments to the Regents of the UC system.
The point is that a lot of people have decided that symbols are more important than logic. There are a lot of other people in the UC system who make more money than Chancellor Katehi. University salaries are already a lot more equal than salaries in the rest of the country. The Chancellor is singled out over other people who make more than they do because of her high visibility and responsibility. There are Americans who make more in one day than any UC Chancellor makes in an entire year. Income inequality is a serious issue in America, but making so much hay of one salary that is so far below the real top is just stupid. It’s a way to make things worse: as the saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Let me try again and clarify. Katehi’s leadership in the wake of Nov 18 was appalling — her ‘tone deafness’ (as one professor put it) in regards to the student protest was stomach turning. She finally apologized but that was many, many hours after the event and only because she was shamed into it by the students and others who called for her resignation. So yes, there are lots of people in the UC system who make more money, but if a medical professional harms a patient, do we continue to keep them on staff? Katehi has raised a lot of money for UC Davis but she is apparently lacking in other dimensions of leadership. So she becomes included in the protest… she is being paid an enormous amount but is not quite competent in her job..
If a doctor is guilty of medical malpractice, then it doesn’t make any difference whether he is paid a lot or paid nothing. Likewise in the case of Chancellor Katehi, there are five investigations of the pepper spray incident underway. I’m not ready to conclude, in advance of these investigations, that it was so much her fault that she needs to resign. Compensation has nothing to do with that question. For that matter protesters first made hay of her salary before she even showed up at Davis.
And if the question is leadership qualities, then I imagine that Katehi has done reasonably well with fund-raising, but that’s NOT what I would list first. What I think is good, or at least a relief, is her commitment to cost savings. The previous chancellor raised campus fees — the fees that Davis actually controls rather than UC fees that are decided elsewhere — by more than $1,200 per student. It was largely for athletics. Although I can’t prove that Katehi would not have done it, I don’t think that it’s her style.