This year, a $784 hike in fees hit UCLA students hard. Now,
Chancellor Albert Carnesale has announced that we will be hit a
good deal harder in the years ahead if we are to keep up with
competing private institutions.
If the chancellor’s predictions come true ““ and by
every indicator, it seems they will ““ perhaps the most
massive blockade on academic access will be placed between needy
families and UCLA. Before long, California public education will be
so expensive that only the wealthy (and the several who receive
financial aid) will be able to attend its institutions.
But this doesn’t have to happen if the chancellor decides
to treat UCLA like the private colleges with which he wants to keep
up ““ like a business. Businesses cut excess costs and
unnecessary bureaucracy, and if UCLA does the same, a fee increase
will not be necessary, and the gates to our tradition can remain
open.
But this means tough decisions and no-nonsense changes.
First, professors must agree to teach more classes to
accommodate the growing student population of UCLA. Second, many of
the approximately 17,000 administrative positions must be cut.
The UCLA professoriate is an overpaid elite. Faculty can make up
to $120,000 annually, with several months of vacation a year. It
would be absurd to suggest major cuts in salary ““ professors
are the backbone of our university, and we must remain competitive.
The middle ground must be to ask professors to increase their class
time, to do more of what professors are meant to do ““
teach.
The Web site of the University of California Office of the
President maintains that the highest paid professors in the UC
system make $122,112 a year, or $58.48 per hour. This hourly rate
seems reasonable and maybe even too low for world-class
scholars.
But the hourly rate is calculated by the UCOP with the premise
that professors work roughly 55 hours a week. Not only is this
number implausible in general, its truth is even more questionable
in regard to UCLA professors. Just last year, new courses were
introduced into the curriculum after a study revealed that UCLA has
the smallest courses taught to faculty ratio of any UC school.
According to the Academic Senate of UCLA, professors devote
fewer than 15 hours a week to student credit hours (the
approximated size of his class workload) a week ““ 15 of the
55 hours they are said to work. In different terms, the average
UCLA professor teaches a mere 4.6 courses a year.
Both the number of courses and hours could be doubled, and
professors would still have time to research and write.
Of course, not everyone shares this view, including some of the
professors themselves. In a phone interview, Academic Senate
Vice-Chair and Professor Adrienne Lavine said, “If the
university were to do that, then our circumstances would be
considerably less satisfying than at our competitive institutions,
and I believe you’d lose the finest teachers and researchers
at UCLA.”
Lose a few we might, but if a very dignified UCLA professor
teaches one class a year to 30 students, how important is he to the
rest of us? The reputation of our university is important, but the
education we are supposed to receive is more important.
The financial burden can be further relieved by cutting excess
administrative positions. There are currently more than five staff
members at UCLA for every faculty member ““ approximately
17,000 staffers in all. Granted, a great bulk of this number is
involved in UCLA medical operations, which are not funded by the
state to begin with, but many are not. And many we can do
without.
Every UCLA student should browse through a list of
administrative positions. The exercise, I’ve learned, is both
educational and entertaining. One will come across such decorous
ranks as Meeting Room Captain I, II and III. One will discover the
ladder to plumbing success ““ with apprentice plumber at the
bottom, lead plumber in the middle and supervising plumber on
top.
There are so many personnel that UCLA has several personnel
analysts too. And the interested student will learn also that we
have multiple Coordinators of Volunteer Services (and their
assistants), who generously volunteer to get paid up to 20 bucks an
hour. There are supervisors who have coordinators who have deputies
who have assistants who have apprentices.
Max Benavidez, the senior executive director for media relations
at UCLA, told me, “First, you have to understand that the
people who hold these positions are there to support students.
Housing, facilities, management … they make sure the trains run
on time here at UCLA.”
And to an important extent, this is true. The administration is
crucial to every university. But 17,000 people working the train
station means higher ticket prices and only wealthy people on the
train itself.
UCLA undoubtedly needs a strong and well-paid faculty and a good
administration. But we can change teaching standards and spending
policy and still retain these. We can be a better business that
produces a better product at a lower cost.
It takes a minimal sacrifice on the part of the faculty and
staff and creates extraordinary opportunities for those who would
otherwise be without.
Hovannisian is a second-year history and philosophy student.
E-mail him at ghovannisian@media.ucla.edu.