Highest-paid UC execs demand millions in benefits

[Dave_Berry]

"Three dozen of the University of California's highest-paid executives are threatening to sue unless UC agrees to spend tens of millions of dollars to dramatically increase retirement benefits for employees earning more than $245,000." What's wrong with this picture?

Highest-paid UC execs demand millions in benefits

[Christian2]

This is the picture of California in general. High government/public employee salary and benefits make it a time bomb and present severe consequence in the state's economy in the near future.

[UCBChemEGrad]

^Yes, it's only going to get worse...and create generational conflict.

[barrons]

For once Yudof is right.

[xiggi]

Oh, you got to feel sorry for them. Rather than jumping ship and finding one of the many public sector opportunities to double or triple dip, they thought that the "system" would allow them to use public funds as the old piggy-bank for the chosen ones. Poor guys, they also miss out on the bonanza at cities such as Vernon, Maywood, or Bell City.

On the other hand, I am not sure who deserves most of the blame ... the people who expected the organized thievery to last forever and are now complaining, or the morons who allowed this and more egregious abuses of public finances to develop of the past decades. All those stories of high pensions, double dipping by people who served the armed forces, police forces, and other similar functions, are simply repulsive.

Those people should receive all the money they extracted from the system, but the state should ipropose a confiscatory income tax of 99% on anything above 60% of the last working wages. Let the people vote on this tax and see what citizens think about such schemes.

[UCBChemEGrad]

^ I know...in a little fairness, these deals were crafted in 1999...when everyone was getting rich on pets.com and they assumed a "conservative" 10% stock market growth rate. Well, when those returns ended up being essentially 0% through the next decade, there's your $21 billion (and growing) unfunded mandate.

[Erin's Dad]

I think they should be allowed to walk. The UCs can recruit replacements. Those positions may become stepping stones for people on the way up rather than final resting spots.

[kelsmom]

When I think of the unbelievable gap between what someone who WORKS for the school earns & what someone who "runs" the school makes, I want to throw up. More & more is being asked of the workers every single day, and they are expected to accept less & less ... by those who demand THEY get more & more. Yeah, Mom was right. Life's not fair.

[poetgrl]

More and more student borrowing, labeled as "financial aid."

"Financial Aid" for the UC executives, that is.

[quomodo]

As a public high school student here, I just have to say... I love my state.

[JHS]

Come on. Hardly any of those people have academic jobs. With a few exceptions (mainly business school deans, and a law school dean recruited from Harvard a few years ago) they are health care, IT, and investment professionals who could work in a wide variety of institutions. It hardly strains credulity to believe that they relied on an official policy of the Board of Regents adopted in 1999 promising them a more favorable pension formula once a ministerial IRS hurdle had been cleared. I would bet anything that all of these people have cash compensation that is below competitive industry levels, and that perks and pension benefits are what the UC relies on to recruit top people.

Those positions may become stepping stones for people on the way up rather than final resting spots.

Yeah, right. CEO of the UCSF medical center ought to be a training-wheels kind of job? What does the UCSF CEO do when he grows up? Berkeley CIO? I'm completely ready to trust computer security for Lawrence-Livermore to someone inexperienced who will work cheap. Of course, Boalt dean IS traditionally a stepping stone for people on the way up . . . to university president. (I wonder how many Boalt deans have actually retired in the UC system.)

Of course, California and the University of California are in crisis, and everyone should expect to share in the pain. Of course it's unseemly for these people to be squealing that there should be more slop in their trough at a time when everyone else is on a diet. But the starting point for negotiations ought to be what they were told they were making, not some essentially random number lower than that.

[kxc1961]

This is the reason why I forbid by children to go to UC system.

[eaglemom10]

We briefly considered California schools (my husband would love the excuse to visit) but decided with the way things appear to be going (economically) in California, versus in our home state of Texas, our DS would be better off closer to home. CA is a great place to visit.

[kxc1961]

We lived in Northern CA for 6 years. Loved it. That was over 5 years ago. Kids wanted to be back to CA. I guess they can try to do that by working for a CA company when they graduate.

[rocketman08]

I have mixed feelings about these sorts of stories.

On the one hand yes it looks a bit crazy that some of these leadership roles in academia earn as much as they do.

On the other hand it boils down to the free market and if you want a certain professional with certain skills and experience sometimes you have to pay the big bucks to recruit and retain them. Most of the people in these roles are not academics, or if they were at some point they often bring with them a breadth of other skills and experiences outside their pure academic discipline. The simple fact is that with rare exceptions you can't just pluck some academic out of their department and have them try to run a whole university system. Most academics simply don't have the skills and experience to best fill those roles--and to be honest most have little interest in filling those roles anyway.

What does seriously annoy me is the often lack of accountability in some of these high ranking posts. In the private sector one is, more often than not, expected to perform to justify their high salary from (and thus cost to) the company. (Yes there are examples to the contrary, but in general that's what's expected in the private sector). In the public sector all too often it seems like so long as you still have a pulse you stay in your high ranking role no matter how inefficient or incompetent you become.