You can find the salary
comparison used to justify the pay level to the Regents at:
The governor, the lieutenant governor, and one regent was
unhappy with the salary and the news media picked up the complaints. See, for example:
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_22074232/uc-berkeleys-new-chancellor-under-consideration-by-regents
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2012/11/cost-cutting-wont-come-easy-to-uc/
Probably, however, if there was to be controversy, it might have been over an item in the footnotes (which apparently news media reporters and maybe regents don’t read). Given all the concerns about unfunded liabilities in the retirement system – including the 100% unfunded retiree health plan – it is a bit surprising (no?) to find this item in the pay package in footnote M:
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_22074232/uc-berkeleys-new-chancellor-under-consideration-by-regents
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2012/11/cost-cutting-wont-come-easy-to-uc/
Probably, however, if there was to be controversy, it might have been over an item in the footnotes (which apparently news media reporters and maybe regents don’t read). Given all the concerns about unfunded liabilities in the retirement system – including the 100% unfunded retiree health plan – it is a bit surprising (no?) to find this item in the pay package in footnote M:
Item M. As an
exception to policy, eligibility to participate in the University’s insured
retiree health-care plans on an accelerated eligibility schedule (subject to
changes in the law), receiving 50 percent of the maximum University
contribution after completing five years of service. For each additional year
of service completed, the percentage will be increased by ten percent, thereby
making Mr. Dirks eligible for the maximum University contribution upon
completing ten years of service.
We’ll eventually get the audio for the special regents
meeting at which the pay package was approved.
Did the governor – with his concerns about the “wall of debt” faced by
the state – get beyond the $50,000? We’ll
have to wait to hear. [UPDATE: I am told by someone who heard the meeting that there was no discussion/debate concerning the footnoted items.]
There is an interview with the incoming chancellor in the Daily
Cal (the Berkeley student newspaper) – which includes an audio recording -
at:
Excerpt:
It is unlikely that
we’re going to turn the corner and go back to where the great Master Plan
started and the kind of funding schemes that were envisioned as fundamental to
the success of that Master Plan. It’s a different reality, and we know now that
a lot of other things are possible that weren’t even thinkable in those days —
from the use of digital technology, online education, to the role that private
support will necessarily play in the great public universities. This is
certainly something that is not happening only at the University of California
… Unless I’m reading the tea leaves wrong, I think we’ll be very happy if we
can maintain the level of state support, at least the level of percentage of
revenue that we currently have… (W)e
have that same set of challenges in private universities too. We don’t take
funding for things that we don’t accord great priority to, that we don’t
actually give credence to as part of an academic planning process. So when we
go out and engage in a campaign, we map opportunities for fundraising right
onto a strategic academic plan that has already been formulated as something
that is an organic outgrowth of a whole variety of constituents on campus who
have been part of that process … There are all sorts of safeguards, all sorts
of protocols that we’ve used in private universities and that are used here to
ensure that undue influence from donors doesn’t in fact change the academic
mission of the university.
No comments:
Post a Comment