In times when tight budgets at public colleges force university officials to lay off workers, raise tuition and cut funding for programs, a bill currently circulating in the California State Senate could address the controversy surrounding high compensation for college executives.
The bill, SB 217, introduced last week by State Senator Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, would ban the boards of California colleges, including UC Regents, from increasing the salaries of executive officers in years when they vote to increase student fees. According to the bill, executive officers would include chancellors, vice presidents, treasurers and secretaries.
The bill would affect executive officers who make about $200,000 or more a year and would not impact lower wage workers, such as service personnel, said Adam Keigwin, chief of staff for Yee. The bill would not make exceptions for these pay increases, even for inflation.
Supporters of the plan point out that UC tuition costs more than ever but that families are struggling, unemployment is high and qualified students should not be finding the UCs unaffordable.
They claim that there must be extra money in the system if executive officers had the funding to give themselves pay hikes, but that these increases were not an area where taxpayer dollars should be invested.
While the UCs are public, taxpayer-funded institutions, they often act like private institutions with regard to executive compensation, Keigwin said.
He hopes the bill will separate the combined use of tuition increases with executive pay increases. “We’re trying to break the nexus between the two.”
While Yee believes the bill would not lower tuition for students, his objective is to put a stop to student fee increases when there is enough money for college executives to give themselves pay increases, Keigwin said.
“As long as the executives continue to receive excessive payouts, we will be unable to keep our universities affordable or attract the most qualified faculty,” Yee said in a statement on his Web site.
Some analysts, however, find the high salaries of college executives justifiable. They claim that the bill is symbolic but not likely to do much.
“(Salary caps are) a ridiculous idea and should not be done,” said Raymond Cotton, vice president of Higher Education at ML Strategies LLC, a government relations consulting firm.
Cotton said the market and the quality of a person’s contribution should decide how people at all levels of the university should be paid. He also believes the purpose of salary caps for college executives is to serve the political interests of the proposing party.
There are two poles to the argument of executive compensation, said Paul Fain, a senior reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education and a contributor to its annual executive compensation survey.
One side believes that colleges have to pay to recruit big talent and that executives deserve what they receive because of their workloads.
Opponents counter that these executives are paid too much for a nonprofit, especially during times when budgets are limited.
Fain notes that the amount spent on top executives is only a tiny amount of the overall budget.
“Look at UCLA. The university had a total budget of $4.1 billion in 2007-2008, while Chancellor Block made $445,716, according to our salary survey.”
The pay for executive officers at California colleges was below average by about 33 percent and does not factor in the higher cost of living, Fain said. The chancellor also does not make nearly as much as a coach or medical professional, he added.
The UC Regents, who have the power to decide on the issue of compensation for UC executive officers, have not yet formulated a position.
“At this particular time, we’re in the process of assessing the potential impacts on UC,” said UC spokesman Ricardo Vazquez and offered no further comment.