Aiming to improve compensation transparency, the UC Board of
Regents will meet for the second time this month to discuss an
external audit, which is to be released before they meet today.
Teleconferences of the meeting will be held across the state, as
well as in North Carolina, Spain and Germany. At UCLA, the
teleconference will be held in the James E. West Alumni Center.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers audit is an additional step in the
University of California’s road to increase public
accountability.
It is scheduled to be released only a week after a UC-appointed
Task Force on UC Compensation, Accountability and Transparency
released a critical report condemning the UC for poor transparency
policies and offering recommendations to improve practices.
The regents will consider three audits: the
PricewaterhouseCoopers audit, in-house audits ““ one within
the UC Office of the President and others within each of the
UC’s 10 campuses ““ and an external audit by the Bureau
of State Audits, said Student Regent Adam Rosenthal.
Though each year the UC conducts external and internal audits,
Regent Chairman Gerald Parsky requested the PricewaterhouseCoopers
audit take a particularly close look at public accountability in
order to improve transparency regarding issues of compensation.
Though the report by the task force was just recently released,
Rosenthal said with a third report, the regents and the UCOP will
be able to help the UC increase public accountability while still
recruiting top administrative
faculty.
“We have the task force audit as well as a state audit,
(but) we also wanted a third audit to ensure that no stone is left
unturned and we can get to the bottom of these issues,”
Rosenthal said.
The information released in the audit will be used in addition
to the recommendations already given by the task force earlier this
month, Parsky said following the release of the task force’s
recommendations.
“We will make our decisions informed not just by the task
force findings but also by the PricewaterhouseCoopers audit that
the regents ordered, and the Bureau of State Audits,” he
said.