Tomorrow, thousands of University of California faculty will walk out in protest of state budget cuts, furloughs, and increases to student fees. The action will happen across all ten UC campuses (can you name them all?) and is supported by simultaneous strikes by two unions (UTPE and CUE) representing clerical and technical employees of the university. Here at UC Davis, there is a large rally planned for the main quad in the morning to draw public attention to the issues.
Since my last post on this topic, when it appeared that there would be salary cuts announced, there indeed were. But, especially in the summer, things happen slowly at universities. The original proposal was to give everyone except graduate students a 5% pay cut. The faculty were asked for their input on whether they preferred a pay cut, a salary reduction, or a hybrid. Once it was established that the format would be furloughs, we were asked if furlough days should be on teaching days or not. Despite the overwhelming sentiment of the UC faculty that the students should feel some of the pain of the budget cuts (which they already do through increased fees this year and next) the UC Office of the President elected to mandate that furlough days not be on teaching days.
Many of us thought that it was completely crazy to make pay cuts apply to everyone. For example, on the federal grant on which I am principal investigator (meaning I manage the budget) we pay our postdocs 100% from federal funds, including their benefits and overhead, which is essentially a tax paid to the university. Cutting the salaries of our postdocs would have only a negative effect on the university budget, and would demoralize the most productive research workers at the institution. It would damage for years our ability to attract good people. These arguments won out, and so the furloughs apply only to faculty and staff. (The application to medical school personnel is even more complicated – we won’t go there.)
In the end, the faculty furloughs are on a graded scale according to pay, tooping out at 10% for those making over $240,000 per year. (You can see everyone’s salary in the whole UC system using the nice tool provided by the San Francisco Chronicle…it’s eye-opening.) But even faculty and staff earning less than $40,000 will get a 4% furlough, which, to many of us, seems cruel.
Anyway, things simmered along during the summer, with anger building steadily. The walkout was planned about a month ago, and has really caught fire now. But then, last week UC President Yudof, faced with the spectre of even deeper cuts next year (when federal stimulus money for the state of California runs out), and a continuation of the “fiscal emergency” he declared into the next academic year all but certain, he announced plans to dramatically increase student fees by 30%, to over $10,000 per year for the first time ever, in addition to the 9.3% increase pushed through in May to help close the budget gap.
Ultimately, we all realize that the budget problems we face stem from the poor economy coupled with the effects of Proposition 13, passed over 30 years ago. By requiring a 2/3 majority in the state legislature to pass budget actions, it has led to a tyranny of the minority, a minority of, yes, Republicans who simply will not accept any new tax no matter what it does to the future of the state. Prop 13 caps property taxes at 1% of assessed value of a home, and caps the rate at which that value can rise to 2% per year, unless the house is sold. Clearly in a housing market that saw huge increases past decades, with far faster increases than 2%, this has led to enormous inequities in tax rates. For example, though my neighbors across the street have a house worth about what ours is, they pay about a quarter of what we do in taxes. This has benefitted the elderly greatly, and was a strong motivation for Prop 13 originally, but it has hamstrung the ability of both the state and local governments to support education, both K-12 and higher education.
We, as a state, are eating our seed corn. The University of California and the California State University systems are a tremendous engine for both long and short term economic growth. From this great compilation of statistics about UC let me just point out a few:
- More than 220,000 students are enrolled in the University of California.
- For every dollar of state money, the university secures six dollars in federal research money.
- UC researchers patent three new inventions per day.
- UC has the highest proportion of low-income students among the country’s top research universities.
It’s just stupid to think that de-funding the university will not seriously damage the state in the long run.
When I am out on the quad tomorrow, it will be with the intention of motivating the leadership in this university to fight, fight like hell, to make the case to the public and the legislature that we MUST support a public option for higher education. So far I haven’t seen the passion. President Yudof, and the chancellors of the ten campuses should all be out there on radio talk shows, TV, and the print media making the case to the public that this situation is dire. They should join forces with other state institutions to over turn Prop 13.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Prop 13’s limits on property taxes have hardly been a drag on state revenues.
A reporter for the SD Union dug up the historical data, and found that since 1980, property tax revenues have increased faster (579 %) than the total revenues collected by the state (555%)
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Yudof may feel that he can be more effective in boardrooms rather than on TV. Clearly he hasn’t been very effective this year in either place, but that isn’t entirely his fault. California, while one of my two favorite and most beautiful states, has from its inception had somewhat of a boom-and-bust ethos that often isn’t so conducive to academia and research. Perhaps the best solution is to look for jobs elsewhere, and let the state eat its seed corn.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Of course, the long-term defunding of the UCs only exacerbates the problem. What did the state expect to happen if they cut the funding? Of course the tuition was going to skyrocket.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Marshal, thanks for the link to your statistics on revenue. It’s particularly enlightening to read the comments to the SD Union piece, one in particular, which logically demolishes the poor guy’s whole argument. IMHO.
The question is how much *should* revenues have increased in nearly 30 years, given inflation, the increase in state population, etc.? What’s the right number? How much should be property tax based, and how much should come from, say, a tax on oil and gas extraction? (Oh, I forgot, that one is zero in California, unlike Texas). How much local K-12 school district funding should come from the state, and how much from local taxes? (Careful of your answer here – it might affect how much you have to spend on prisons; California now spends more on that than on UC + CSU combined.)
Prop 13 really is still the devil. It hamstrings us and has led to terrible, unsustainable inequities.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:58 pm
holy crap, search in that UC salary database under the “Office of the President”. The results are unbelievable. When did academia turn into a place for people to milk the system and get rich?
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
What’s the difference between a “pay cut” and a “salary reduction”? Sounds like the same side of the same coin, to me, but there must be a difference if they were asked to choose, unless that was sarcasm.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:27 pm
As a former employee of the UC, let me say nothing would be better for the system than some serious budget cutting. The sense of entitlement among the employees is disturbing to anyone with a work ethic . The work expectations for non-faculty employees are laughable. The amount of time people spend on vacation, sick-leave, or otherwise excused absence is hugely frustrating. The benefits that accrue to even the most useless of workers are shameful for an institution supposedly run in the public interest.
The jewels of the UC are to be found amongst the faculty and their research students. They and their interests should be protected. The cancer that’s metastasized around them needs to be debulked. There are indispensable and useful staff and administrative employees, but there are way too many slackers, incompetents, and mis-assigned employees, doing too many things unrelated to research or education at too-high levels of compensation with too few quality controls.
Demanding more money from a populace facing collapsing home prices, 12.2% unemployment, rising taxes, and huge economic uncertainty, to fund an academic lifestyle for more than 150,000 workers isn’t going to fly.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Huh. It must be different for the Cal State system. ALL of my professors have furlough days on days when class would otherwise be held.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I heard that the ‘big four’ (Berkeley, UCSF, UCLA and UCSD) are thinking of bailing out of the UC system and becoming a private research group, since they think they can attract enough money that way.
Anyone know anything about this?
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
“California now spends more on [prisons] than on UC + CSU combined”
Shameful. How can it cost more to imprison 180,000 prisoners than to educate 650,000 students? I don’t think its coincidence that all three are in the grips of the public employees unions. The confluence of interests between law-and-order “family values” sickos and prison unions ensures folks get locked-up for non-violent offenses.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I too must report that the CSU system (and in particular SDSU) is being hit VERY hard by budget woes. Classes are being canceled due to furloughs, all professors are taking a 10% pay cut (in the form of 2 furlough days per month), and student fees have increased some 40%. Who is California kidding?? The situation is beyond messed up, to put it politely.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:55 pm
I think its long overdue to cut out the waste in the CA university system. My daughter dated a UC prof’s kid, and the prof was always available to drive her kids around–Basically, she taught 2 classes a week, and was home the rest of the time–Summers off.
Oh, and she had a TA, who basically taught the classes anyway.
Why don’t professors TEACH more? Maybe then our kids could compete on a worldwide basis? EVERY prof doesn’t need to be involved in “research”, which is sometimes pretty lame and off the wall. Perhaps it is time to split these two functions into mutually exclusive areas–research and teaching.
Hopefully the Board will use this economic recession as an opportunity to do what’s needed to be done for a long, long time. Especially since you can’t fire anyone due to tenure.
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
The Berkeley walkout teach-in is happening now, and there’s a live blog:
http://clog.dailycal.org/2009/09/23/teach-in-liveblog/
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:59 pm
As a former student and now employee of a UC, there are certainly areas which could use trimming. While these areas do need to be addressed, I think the main reason people are so upset is because the top executives keep giving themselves raises while cutting pay to all staff and faculty and increasing student fees so dramatically. If you look at the UC salary database, charts which show percent change by salary grade between 2006 and 2008 are very enlightening.
@Lakelady
The primary goal of the UC system is to incorporate research into education. The CSU system is generally designed to be mostly about teaching rather than research. I think the reason the UC system is highly regarded is most definitely because of its leaders in research, and it is a detriment when advanced classes are not taught by top researchers. Currently the UC system strikes a very good balance between lecturers (for more routine courses) and research faculty. Also, all of the faculty I have ever worked with have spent long hours and lots of hard work at both education and in their personal research labs.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Lakelady, I do research and in fact I am teaching for many, many hours per week. It is the thing I do the most as a professor. I teach undergraduates (bio majors, physics majors) in class and in my lab, graduate students (both in class and in my research group) and even postdoctoral researchers. I have nearly 30 years experience in this field, and this is how knowledge is passed down. I think you are simply incorrect that professors at UC don’t teach enough – we can’t do our research without teaching every single day, in the lab and in the classroom.
The system of research universities in the US is the envy of the world, and has been the single biggest driving force in our economic development. We can’t blow it, not now.
DP in CA: glad you asked about the difference between a pay cut and a furlough…it’s somewhat subtle. There are a couple points. First, if we do it as a furlough, our base salary numbers stay the same, and if furloughs end, we get that salary again some day. Also, our retirement plans are based on our salaries. If we simply took pay cuts, it could be years to restore what we are getting now (and may be anyway) and it would hurt our retirement for years to come.
In terms of how we faculty will change our daily work, there is no one I know who will do anything different at all. We get promotions and advancement by being productive, and no one I know wants to jeopardize that. We’ll do the same thing we always did, but for less money.
Unless some other university offers us more…and some people are taking those offers and leaving.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:31 pm
how is it that nobody has yet posted a link to the letter from Andrew Scull of UCSD, and signed by almost two dozen other UCSD faculty, where they suggest closing UC Merced, Santa Cruz, and Riverside for not being at the same elite level as Berkeley, UCLA, or UCSD?
http://toodumbtolivearchive.blogspot.com/2009/07/june-15-2009-dear-i-write-on-behalf-of.html
Scull later tried to make it sound as if he has credentials over anybody who disagrees when he claims “I came from the Ivy Leagues…”
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jul/19/1n19uccuts221810-ucsd-profs-say-some-campuses-can-/
perhaps the most disgraceful part of this, really, is that i have not seen any faculty from UCSD rebut Scull’s letter openly.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Let me see, CA ex-governor and ex-president Reagan big dogma is “Big government is bad. Tax is bad. Free market is magic.”
CA has the lowest tax regime, the most insanely free market. The biggest housing boom in human history. But the state government is still too big, if insolvency can be called too big. So now it cuts education, essential services, release 40,000 inmates.
When will CA reach utopia? Like the whole darn government outsourced to China, and pay almost no tax? 99.9% pure private free enterprise? In the meantime, enjoy the wonderful results of Mr Reagan ideology.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Don’t get me started on prop 13 and how I pay roughly 6 times more in property tax than my neighbors for roughly the same quality of house.
And, here at Stanford we only have a salary freeze this year, so are one of the lucky few. The UC system is a jewel and I sure hope our state government wakes up and realizes that.
Oh – and thanks for the salary look-up tool. I think this will prove to be very useful…when it says “Professor – academic year” is that the 9 month salary that is listed???
September 24th, 2009 at 2:38 am
What is the “extra pay” which usually (always?) makes up a substantial fraction of the total salary of the high earners?
Interesting database. (In Norway and a few other countries, you can do a search like this on the web for EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY. In addition to salary, one can see the amount of tax paid and the total wealth (property, savings etc).) Nice to see that I earn more than John Baez.
September 24th, 2009 at 3:20 am
Two questions?
1) How is it that compensation, even for individuals who are technically govt employees, can be accessible by name by the public?
2) Why are virtually all the top 100 wage earners involved in the medical profession?
September 24th, 2009 at 3:41 am
Why is it disturbing? Shouldn’t taxpayers see where their money is going to?
As I mentioned, in some countries such information (and even more information) is available on everyone in the country, accessible to anyone. No-one has a problem with it. Why is it disturbing to you?
They aren’t just “technically” government employees, they ARE government employees.
Why are the top earners in medicine? Probably competition. Presumably, many could make even more money somewhere else, so the university has to pay them a lot to keep them there. This isn’t a tactic a cosmologist can use to demand higher pay.
September 24th, 2009 at 6:16 am
I’m not trying to be too negative, but I do have a hard time finding sympathy for the faculties here. I know these problems are not a lot of their making, but they are part of the system. I’m not sure of the numbers for CA specifically, but overall, college prices have been raising 15-20% every 5 years (already accounting for inflation the %s are much higher otherwise). This is much higher than wages have been increasing. And now they want to increase student fees by 30% more? Ridiculous. I don’t see how faculty can expect this to continue without it coming back to bite them. It just took the current recession to get us there. In addition to the short term need for increased taxes, the reasons behind these continuous increase in student fees needs to be addressed.
September 24th, 2009 at 7:05 am
In the UC system, fees are a small part of the funding; most of it comes from taxes. (This is in contrast to private universities.) The financial problem is a result of the state taking in less money from taxes and/or spending it on other things. Asking the students to pay for it through higher fees goes against the principle of a tax-funded university.
The figures are something like 17,000 employees who make more than 100,000 per year. How many employees are there altogether? What is the total personnel cost (not just gross salaries—which are presumably what one sees in the database mentioned above—but also insurance, pensions etc)? Let’s agree on $100,000 as a reasonable salary; how much (both in absolute terms and as a fraction of total personnel costs) would this cost be reduced if the 17,000 who now make more than 100,000 were to be cut back to 100,000?
If the reduction is substantial, then one could argue that the highest salaries are aggravating the problem (even if they are not the immediate cause). If not, then the highest salaries are not a financial problem, though for some people they might be a moral problem.
I still want to know what the “extra pay” is.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:00 am
ScottB,
I’m not at a UC right now but based on my experiences at a state research university, 30% higher fees for students do hurt the faculty as well. As I recall, graduate students are also required to pay those fees at the UC (and indeed many other universities). When a student joins a research group and has his or her salary paid by a federal grant, the grant pays those fees and, at least in many places, their tuition. Since grant sizes aren’t getting any larger, an increase in student fees simply pays for less research, forcing us to spend more time writing grants. This is different from the substantial overhead the university takes from a grant, which goes to pay for the maintenance and operation of the research facilities (as I have been told). To make up the difference, I request much less summer salary than I would like so fee increases for students hurt me and my family personally.
I believe many faculty are against fee increases for students as well as budget cuts. Personally, I’d really like to see some hard numbers about how money comes into a typical state (or private) university and what it gets spent on.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:04 am
$195,000 per year for a Berkeley astronomy professor???? No wonder there’s a shortage of jobs out there.
September 24th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Philip, I think you don’t quite understand the funding of the university. The faculty are not state employees, they are employed by the Regents of the University of California. The university used to enjoy state funding at the level of 20% of its budget or so, but that has dropped quite a bit now.
The “extra pay” you see on employees is often summer support. For example, my salary from the university is for the 9-month academic year. I could take summers off, but I don’t – I do research. Part of our research grant from the Department of Energy supports two months of summer work.
For medical professionals, I believe “extra pay” may include clinic fees, etc. I am not certain how that works.
For the really top people, “extra pay” can include housing allowances, drivers, etc. All the perks that the corporate fat cats get.
September 24th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Good luck with fighting the system. Just wanted to tell everyone that similar things are happening elsewhere. In North Carolina, the state imposed a furlough/pay cut at the end of the last fiscal year and it even affected postdocs who are paid by federal funds! Rumor is that another will be expected at the end of this fiscal year as well.
September 24th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
For example, though my neighbors across the street have a house worth about what ours is, they pay about a quarter of what we do in taxes.
Can you explain how that happens? Is your tax rate higher than theirs or is your house valued higher than theirs?
September 24th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Confused: In California, tax assessments are based on the sales price of the house, with very limited annual increments. So if you bought your house thirty years ago for $60,000, and it is worth $1 million today, you will be paying roughly an order of magnitude less than someone who buys the neighboring house today for $1 million. (You’d have to run the numbers to figure it out exactly.) This is part of Prop. 13.
September 24th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Confused: My neighbor bought their house many years ago, probably for under $100k. Its assessed value, under Prop 13, is only allowed to go up by 2% per year. They pay no more than 1% of the assessed value in property taxes. Meanwhile, I bought mine 5 years ago, and when a property changes hands the new assessed value is the sale price. It’s a newcomer tax…personally I think it violates the equal protection clause, but appraently the US Supreme Court didn’t, in 1992 (Nordlinger v. Hahn):
Here is an excerpt from the summary at http://www.oyez.com/cases/1990-1999/1991/1991_90_1912
“The Court, through Justice Blackmun, held that California’s new property tax system rationally and plausibly furthered legitimate state interests in restraining increasing property taxes and preserving local neighborhood stability. The discrepancy which Article XIIIA created between new and long time property owners is warranted, because the latter had a far greater reliance interest in their property than the former. Thus, long-time property owners deserved more protection from higher property taxes than new property owners. This demonstrated a significant difference between the two property owner types. In addition, both of Article XIIIA’s exemptions rationally promoted a legitimate state interest. The first exemption did not discourage older people from moving to a smaller home that is likely to better suit their smaller family and income. The second exemption aimed at preserving family unity and neighborhood stability. Accordingly, the Court held that Article XIIIA did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.”
It will take an amendment to the state constitution to change this…
September 24th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
and when a property changes hands the new assessed value is the sale price.
Thanks for your response. But I am still confused. Is the assessed value different than the actual value? What I mean is, if you buy the house now, will you have to pay more than the assessed value? If yes then I am clear, if not I will still be called Confused.
Sorry for the pain I probably am.
September 25th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Confused,
I believe the way it works:
- What you pay when you buy the house is the actual value, as agreed in the market.
- What you are taxed on is the assessed valuation, which is based on the most recent sale, and increases annually at a low rate, limited by Proposition 13.
So, if a house has not changed hands in a long time, its assessed valuation (and thus the annual property tax) is likely to be much lower than for an equivalent house that has changed hands more recently. The point is that the tax rate reflects rather closely the price at the time of the most recent sale. Since over the last several decades, real-estate prices have gone up dramatically (excepting the last year or so), there can be drastic differences in property tax for equivalent housing.
So if you buy an existing house, that has not been sold for a long time, you can expect to pay a lot more in annual property tax than did the previous owner, because the new assessed valuation will reflect current property values.
September 25th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I know it’s unfair to declare CA a “stupid state”. But honestly, I cannot understand how anyone at any time thought Prop. 13 was a good idea. Surely there had to be dozens of better ways to limit property tax growth than a law which, by all appearances, is designed especially to clobber anyone wishing to move within or to the state. On what planet does that make any sense whatsoever? And how on this one could anyone have consented to be subjected to it? I live in MA, and this place is often lousy with teh stoopid, but CA politics leaves even this jaded masshole astonished.
September 25th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Looking at the salaries, I’m stunned by how much professors make. I work long hours, and live a frugal life, and I don’t make near as much. I mean, it’s amazing: you want me to pay more in taxes? I pay more in total taxes than I can save, and I don’t have a car payment. I don’t have a tv even, which is to say that I don’t want to spend the money to buy one as I need it for other things. I live in a cheap apartment, I work upwards of 65 or more hours in a week, and I don’t make near the money a professor does. And you guys are argueing for more? You want me to give up more of my income to sponsor your Universities?
Here is what I propose:
No one in the University system get’s payed in salary more then 70,000 a year. Tenured Profs make 60, ooo becuase Tenure is worth so much. 70,000 is a lot of money, and way more than the median income in the US. You keep your grant money as it is today. So if you want more, go get a grant. But by no means should tax payers foot the bill for these high salaries. 70,000 is extremely high, and way more than enough.
I’m struck by the arogance of all this, it’s as if you don’t realize that there are people who pay taxes that pay your salary. People who are experiencing ever increasing taxes, in so many different ways, and can’t save enough even when they cut back on things they enjoy. I don’t eat out, such as go to lunch for example, because I just don’t have the money.
I also propose that everyone who works for the government, or the University system, pay an extra 10% income tax, and an extra 10% property tax too.
Your just too greedy. I’m stunned by it all.
-cvj
September 25th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I have no sympathy for you John.
You’re angry that you can’t levy more taxes in order to support even more bloated bureaucracy.
In 2003 the following were true: In the last 5 years the population of California has increased about 8%. The California budget has increased 35%. 400% faster than the population growth. The number of state employees has increased 15%, 2 times faster than the population growth.
And it got worse
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11649004?nclick_check=1
When you’re that far in the red, why are you surprised that an already myopic government is cutting some of the most productive funding?
September 25th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
I also enjoy your ‘this has benefited the elderly’ bit about prop 13. I mean how screwed up is a world where they sacrifice the ability to hire an extra post doc and allow us to fall behind europe in terms of h scores in particle physics just because granny audrey needs to buy her arthiritis pills or wants to buy an extra couple bananas so that she can eat something for breakfast! The nerve of those entitled families and evil capitalists!
September 26th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Hello,
can someone tell me how me how much the average postdoc in particle physics makes in the US? Is it the same at all universities? How does it depend on experience?
thanks,
curious.
September 26th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I had lunch with an accountant that did some work for IU in Indiana. He told me the amount of money that was spent by the university that had nothing to do with education and it was astounding. Someone needs to audit all the universities in my opinion.
September 26th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
If you want instructors who studied the subject in college, got good grades in their classes, and devote their full efforts to undergraduate classes, then go to a school that focuses on that (e.g., CSU system). At a research university, students benefit from learning from and interacting with faculty who are leaders in their fields and continually involved in the creation of new knowledge. In addition the obvious visible roles of teaching traditional classes, faculty at research universities spend a ton of time mentoring students (mostly graduate students, but also undergraduates and post-doctoral students). We could be much more efficient in our research if we did the research ourselves or used primarily previoulsy trained researchers. Indeed, some of my colleagues choose to do that working for for-profit companies and making over 2 times my salary. However, as university faculty it’s our job to involve students in our research so that they further their education while contributing to our research programs.
Now, who is going to pay the tuition and stipend for those graduate students? Support them as they do field work? Buy and operate the equipment they need to analyze the data? Fly them to present their results and get feedback from the other world experts at major scientific meetings? Pay to publish their results in scientific journals, so that mankind can benefit from their efforts? All those require landing grants. At least in the sciences, many faculty bring in several times more money in grants than they are paid by the university. The university takes a hefty chunk off the top and most of what’s left contributes to the university’s programs. But competition for those grants is fierce, and the best researchers win way more than the “average” researcher. In many cases, the highest paid research faculty are actually generating a profit for the university, even after subtracting their large salary. Obviously, other universities would like to have these superstar faculty bringing them money, so the super-star faculty can and often do leave. And that’s why even public universities are willing to pay top dollar to hire and retain super-star faculty.
Yes, there are a few percent of older, tenured faculty who are not nearly as productive as they once were. But I can assure you that in all five departments I’ve been at, the fraction who become slackers is quite small. To the contrary, I’m amazed that many faculty are quite active in research, even after they’ve retired, are no longer receiving a salary from the university, and push on through poor health so that they can mentor one last graduate student.
As a successful science professor at a research university, there are things that I envy about the UC schools. However, I would not move to any university in California for a salary of less than $100k, even if the whole economic mess were suddenly solved. And I’m certainly not in the class of the highest paid faculty, even if we restrict our attention to the sciences (where typical salaries are way below that of fields like medicine, engineering, business and law. In those fields, the salaries are kept high because faculty can easily jump to industry where they will get even higher salaries.) If the UC system wants science faculty at my level or better, then their only choice is to offer top faculty competitive salaries. Otherwise, they will gradually accumulate more and more second or thrd-rate faculty who provide a second or third-rate educational experience to their students. Given the economic mess, that may be something that the citizens of California want to consider. But they need to understand the actual (and admittedly complicated) economics and the long-term consequences of their choices.
September 27th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Sigh. Why is it always ‘we need more revenue!!!!’ California’s problems are NOT revenue based but instead are SPENDING based. And education spending is a part of the problem. I know that is a politically incorrect view to hold on a blog run by individuals working at various universities but I would also hope the same individuals would be willing to look at facts honestly too.
From Cali budget documents:
2000/01 Expenditures: $78.8B (General Fund) $99.4B (Total)
2001/02 $78.7B $103.3B
2002/03 $76.7B $98.9B
2003/04 $71.1B $99.1B
2004/05 Expenditures; $78.7B (General Fund) $105.4B (Total)
2008/09 Expenditures: $103.4B(General Fund) $144.5B (Total)
Or, graphically from 1998 shown against inflation and population growth,
page #3 of
http://www.dof.ca.gov/budget/historical/2009-10/governors/summary/documents/enacted/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
Also can read this which covers education and other locked in spending and its effects:
http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=y0k2li16xl5ery&xid=y0dgall7be9art&done=.y0k2li16xlpery
September 28th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Seems to me that the discussion about CA property taxes is misguided. Inequities make everyone upset if you’re on the “losing” end, but CA property taxes are LOWER for EVERYONE than for many, many people in the U.S. (example, local property taxes where I live are above 3%). So, yes, you may be paying an order of magnitude more than your neighbor, but you are both paying too LITTLE, hence (among many other reasons), the deplorable budget crisis in CA.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Anonymous Snowboarder: Whether California needs more revenue or not is not the question. The support from the state for higher education fell by 9% (in constant dollars) from 1984 to 2004, while the population increased by 35%. Then, in the past two years, state support has fallen dramatically further, leading to the present crisis.
The question is whether this historical trend is in the state’s interest – that is, is this the right thing for the well-being of all Californians? If not, then the state legislature should find a way to reverse this trend, and that means raising revenue so be it. I cannot possibly comment on all the other state programs that are contributing to increasing the California tax burden but support for higher education is certainly not among them. The state budget summary tells a different tale than some of the comments above:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSummary/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
curious: postdocs in experimental particle physics get about $50k a year, on average, I believe.
coolstar: The California tax burden, taking into account property, income, sales, and other taxes, is about average for the US. See the statistics at the Public Policy Institute of California: http://www.ppic.org. It’s a non-partisan organization.
I could almost accept the property tax rate caps brought about by Prop 13, since I intend to stay a long time. But I really think the 2/3 supermajority rule has got to go. Or, we can simply vote in more Democrats, though that seems unlikely.
More likely is that a movement will emerge for a “Prop 98″-like ballot measure next year, that would guarantee that the state spend a certain fraction of the general fund on higher education, as Prop 98 did for K-12 schools.
Now, another revenue killer has been all the tax breaks enacted by Democrats and Republicans alike, for everything from oil companies to adult book stores: see http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ross19-2009feb19,0,3825360.story. Perhaps some of them should be rescinded…it only takes a 50% majority to do so.
cvj, you’ve expressed eloquently the need for better education in California, or wherever you are from.
September 29th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Don’t forget the commercial part of Prop 13. Unlike people, companies can form shell companies to own all of their real estate assets, so each large commercial building has a shell company that owns it in perpetuity. Instead of selling the building when you want to sell the building, you sell the shell company, thus keeping the property tax capped at the original date’s rate.
It’s complete garbage.
Of course, so is paying faculty over $100k. There’s such high demand for professorships (especially in non-technical fields), and there still would be if we lowered salaries 20% for profs that earn over 120k.
September 29th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Majority of professors who are listed making over $100K are famous big-shots, typically quite old. They can easily make as much money or more (esp. adjusted for cost of living) at many other places. The average professor in my department brings $300K a year in federal funding, and the big-shots making $150-200K a year bring in a million or more a year. Many departments will be happy to land those folks.
If you think $70K is a reasonable salary for a fully tenured professor living in Bay area, LA, San Diego or Santa Barbara – I would welcome you to investigate the cost of living issues (look at zillow.com for example).
I have many friends (former grad students friends of mine) who got PhD and now work on Wall Street – they were making $120-150K a year in their first year. Most assistant professors make $65-70K and it takes them 10-20 years to get to $100K – while Wall Street guys get 20% increases every year.
Sure, you can fire all big-shots and hire “professors” willing to work for $70K or even $40K a year – but the quality will suffer tremendously. Don’t forget that for every $1 that CA spends on UC system, the university raises $6 in federal funding. This means that spending $100K on that salary of a professor will bring $600K a year in federally supported funding. Does that make sense in terms of investment in CA economy? You tell me.
October 1st, 2009 at 12:01 am
Hi UC prof,
Thanks for giving some hard numbers. Your point about the cost of living in California is a good one: it is awful expensive, certainly you probably couldn’t live in the city (SF) for 40,000 a year. I think my response was very emotional simply because of the arrogance I see from folks who live off tax payer dollars. If no tax dollars go to paying your salary, or any professor, than I really don’t have a problem with how much you make. But tax dollars come from citizens, by force, and they directly impact my ability to live, and so I think they need to be treated in a very special way. Folks should not assume they are entitled to another’s money, just like you are not entitled to an other’s attention or time.
If all the money funding the UC system is given voluntarily, then I really don’t have a problem. Like any business, you should be paid by how much your customers are willing to give you for the value you deliver. In my experience in college, this concept was not practiced in that instructors where not held to an educational standards, like following best practices in education. So, from my standpoint as someone buying an “education”, what I valued was not delivered.
My values are certainly different from the folks in this web community, at least in a couple of ways. For example, you value the Federal research money a professor brings in: you use it as a measure of their performance. But, for me, you should not count money from tax dollars – federally or otherwise. If I’m taxed and that money is given to you, it doesn’t makes sense to turn around and tell me to be excited about the money you raised. Now, if instead you raised money from investment of citizens or organizations directly, people who willing commit their money to you, then it is something I think is valuable.
In one way, my anger comes from something specific: respecting customers. I wouldn’t yell at my customers for wanting to pay less for the same or better product, particularly these days with the economy so bad. In fact, I actively work to decrease the costs that go into delivering what my customers value, so that I can charge less. What makes me angry, is that _some_ folks don’t treat the tax payers with this same consideration. And if anyone should be treated with that consideration, it certainly is the tax payer, because the tax payer isn’t given a choice: they can’t opt out. I reckon I also encountered this as a student of physics: I was an irritation and not a customer.
All the best,
cvj