The UC Systemwide
Committee on Faculty Welfare (UCFW) carefully studied the recent report on
faculty salaries, recruitment, and retention released by the Legislative
Analyst's Office (LAO). The LAO's major conclusions are the following: 1) total
UC compensation is competitive with top universities; 2) few faculty members
leave, and reasons other than salary are responsible for most faculty leaving;
3) the small number of tenured associate professors who leave shortly after
receiving tenure is not a concern; and 4) UC continues to hire its top-choice
candidates. UCFW questions the accuracy of these conclusions...
(P)rior to 2000, UC
salaries closely matched the Comparison Eight average but started to lag behind
the Comparison Eight universities shortly after 2000... The lag continues to grow.
UC salaries now lag the Comparison Eight by more than 11%...
The LAO makes (an)
error by relying upon UC's most recent, but outdated, analysis of total
remuneration from 2009. At that time, although faculty salaries lagged the
Comparison Eight by about 10%, the value of UC's retirement benefit partially
compensated for the salary lag. This was entirely because employees were not
required to make contributions to their retirement plan and not because the
retirement benefits themselves were overly generous. The LAO overlooked the predictions in this
study, as well as and the update to examine the competitiveness of the
"New Tier" retirement plan, that the UC retirement plan would become
uncompetitive when faculty made a 5% contribution to retirement, as they are
doing in 2012-13... If employee contribution rates rise even higher (6.5% for
current employees in July, 2013 and higher thereafter), then UC benefits will
not compensate for below-market UC faculty salaries whatsoever...
The LAO concluded that
"most faculty do not leave UC or reject UC job offers due to
compensation" on the basis of some exit surveys performed in the
mid-2000's and summarized in ... the LAO report. The LAO noted that several
reasons were given. "Salary" was cited by 33% of those who rejected
UC offers and by 37% of those who left UC.
UCFW notes, first, that "salary" was the most prevalent reason
for both categories. Secondly, an increase in salary could certainly mitigate
concerns about "housing problems" (cited by 22% of those who rejected
UC offers and by 13% of faculty who left) and "cost of living [besides
housing]" (cited by 11% of those who rejected UC offers and by 7% of those
who left). Taking into account not only the issue of "salary" but
also the separately enumerated issues that an increase in salary could
mitigate, then salary-related issues could account for up to 66% of the reasons
for rejecting UC offers and up to 57% of the reasons that faculty leave UC.
This is quite the opposite conclusion of the LAO...
UCFW is uncertain what
point the LAO attempts to make with the data on the fate of Assistant
Professors hired in 2000-01. These data have no reference point, either from
when UC was in a more favorable economic environment than in 2000-01, or from
other universities when the UC data were collected. In contrast to the LAO,
UCFW believes that a 10% rate of departure of young professors after receiving
tenure is of great concern. UC heavily invests in assistant professors,
especially in science and engineering, by providing them with start-up packages
worth several hundred thousand dollars each...
UCFW members, based on
their experiences on search committees in their home departments, question
whether the data provided to LAO by the UC administration concerning the top choices
in faculty searches is truly representative of the current competitive job
market. ...(T)he data are almost 10
years old and do not reflect the current economic conditions in which UC
competes for new assistant professors...
The full UCFW report is at: http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/ucfw/UCFWreLAOFacultyRecruitmentandRetentionMarch2103.pdf
The December LAO report is at: http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/PubDetails.aspx?id=2675
And - for the record - we'll try to maintain a sunny attitude and be optimistic that the LAO will do better next time:
And - for the record - we'll try to maintain a sunny attitude and be optimistic that the LAO will do better next time:
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