While campuses cut classes, raise fees, furlough employees, and lay off instructors, they have been hiring outside firms to help them restructure. A few months ago, Berkeley announced that it would pay Bain and Company $3 million to suggest ways to reduce the Cal budget, and now UCLA has hired the Huron Consulting Group to assist in the campus’ restructuring. Not only should we question the cost of bringing in outside firms to perform tasks that could be handled internally, but we need to ask about the role of shared governance when an outside group is hired to make important decisions that will affect all aspects of the university.
One has to wonder if the administrators who hired Huron looked into this firm’s recent past. As Chicago Business reported last summer, this consulting group has been in disarray since it admitted to its own false reporting of internal profits. It turns out that this company, which is supposed to investigate the finances of other companies, has been misrepresenting its own finances on a regular basis: “Huron said it would restate results for the three years ended in 2008 and for the first quarter of 2009, resulting in a halving of its profits, to $63 million from $120 million, for the 39-month period.” We are not talking here about a small one-time accounting error; rather, this accounting firm has consistently misrepresented its own earnings, and the story gets much worse.
The reason why Huron had to admit to its habit of inflating earnings is that someone found out that thre was a secret agreement between Huron and the shareholders of the companies it was restructuring: “The company said its hand was forced by its recent discovery that holders of shares in acquired firms had an agreement among themselves to reallocate a portion of their earn-out payments to other Huron employees. The company said it had been unaware of the arrangement.” After Huron revealed in the summer of 2009 that it had participated in this kick-back scheme, its stock went down 70%, and it replaced its entire management team.
The Huron Group was created from the remnants of the Arthur Anderson firm after the Enron scandal, and Reuters has reported that many experts believe that the corrupt culture of the old firm has found its way into the new company. Just as Anderson concentrated on maximizing their own fees at the expense of the companies it was investigating, Huron appears to be profiting by forcing companies to pay them off while they are restructuring their business practices.
According to another business news outlet, the SEC is currently investigating Huron for the way it bill its clients,and while one of the main functions of this firm is to make sure that institutions follow accounting laws and regulations, they are now facing numerous investigations and lawsuits.
Some UC faculty might be interested to know that the head of the company, who has been forced to step down, has been accused of forcing employees to contribute to Mitt Romney’s run for president, and the management has had its own inflated compensation requests rejected by the company’s shareholders.
Didn’t UCLA looked into any of these issues when they decided to hire Huron to restructure the campus? It only took me a few minutes of using Google to find several articles documenting this company’s questionable practices and horrible reputation. We have to ask why didn’t any of the highly compensated administrators sitting on the new restructuring committee examine this company before they committed to paying a large sum of money to do the job they should be doing themselves in the first place.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Reading Yudof’s Playbook: An Inside Look at the Future of the UC
James Garland’s Saving Alma Mater: A Rescue Plan for America’s Public Universities is a great summation of everything that is currently wrong with American universities. While the intention of the book does not appear to be to provide a framework for how to destroy higher education, the text provides the playbook for any administrator who wants to justify the privatization of public universities. Garland’s main argument is that public institutions should wean themselves off of their dependence on state funds by raising tuition to whatever level the market will handle. In fact, when he was president of Miami University in Ohio, this is exactly what Garland did. In one year, he more than doubled tuition from $8,300 to $18,000 (xvii). Garland claims that the result of this experiment was that enrollments for first-generation students went up 40% and enrollments for minority students increased 25%. By using a high tuition, high aid model, this administrator argues universities can bring in more money and still attract underrepresented students.
Not only does Garland’s claims fly in the face of national statistics, but his own use of numbers is highly suspect. First of all, if the whole goal of raising tuition is to bring in more money so the university does not have to rely on unpredictable state funding, someone must be paying a lot more money. Moreover, if all of the students from Ohio are receiving some form of financial aid, it must be that out-of-state students are paying much more, so in-state students can pay less. Overall, this model reduces the number of in-state students and forces a reliance on wealthy out-of-state enrollments.
Of course, this is the model we have already seen with the University of Michigan and University of Viriginia, and it appears to be the model that the University of California is currently pursuing. As Peter Sacks has documented in his book, Tearing Down the Gates, in 1992, a third of University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) students were from lower-income families, but by 2002, only 13% were eligible for Pell grants. This precipitous loss of lower-income students also occurred at the flagship public universities of Virginia, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Between 1992 and 2002, the percentage of students receiving Pell grants at the University of Wisconsin at Madison went down 28%, while University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign went down 15%. Furthermore, after reducing its reliance on state funding by rapidly increasing its tuition, the University of Virginia saw its percentage of students eligible for Pell grants drop to just 8%.
Garland does not concentrate on this question of equity, and instead, he insists that the only way to keep universities solvent is to allow for the free market to balance supply and demand, and therefore universities should not rely on state subsidies to balance their books, and they also should not allow states to regulate their tuition. Here we see the neoliberal playbook in its purest form: the government should be eliminated so the free market can function in its pure state.
Garland attaches this need to break the relation between the public university and the state to global trends that no one can prevent. According to this common fatalistic logic, states will continue to reduce their funding for universities because they have lost their tax base due to the movement of jobs overseas (xi). Furthermore, since most of the costs for universities are fixed (tenure, healthcare, and building maintenance), the only thing a university can do is to either constantly raise tuition or lower the educational quality by replacing tenure-track faculty with part-timers and expanding class sizes, while neglecting the need for repairs and upkeep.
Of course, most universities have selected both strategies because for the last thirty years, we have seen a constant increase in tuition combined with a downsizing of the faculty. In fact, one of the giant holes in Garland’s book is he does not see how universities have simply shifted their funding structures by making undergraduate students pay for the constant increase in administration and research budgets. In other words, as the quality of undergraduate education has been downsized, the cost has gone up because the price of tuition is unrelated to the quality of education.
While Garland’s book is full of holes and contradictions, it is worthy of a read for one reason: it appears to be the training manual for university presidents like Mark Yudof. Virtually every claim and strategy discussed in this work has been recycled and re-presented by the UC president.
Not only does Garland’s claims fly in the face of national statistics, but his own use of numbers is highly suspect. First of all, if the whole goal of raising tuition is to bring in more money so the university does not have to rely on unpredictable state funding, someone must be paying a lot more money. Moreover, if all of the students from Ohio are receiving some form of financial aid, it must be that out-of-state students are paying much more, so in-state students can pay less. Overall, this model reduces the number of in-state students and forces a reliance on wealthy out-of-state enrollments.
Of course, this is the model we have already seen with the University of Michigan and University of Viriginia, and it appears to be the model that the University of California is currently pursuing. As Peter Sacks has documented in his book, Tearing Down the Gates, in 1992, a third of University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) students were from lower-income families, but by 2002, only 13% were eligible for Pell grants. This precipitous loss of lower-income students also occurred at the flagship public universities of Virginia, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Between 1992 and 2002, the percentage of students receiving Pell grants at the University of Wisconsin at Madison went down 28%, while University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign went down 15%. Furthermore, after reducing its reliance on state funding by rapidly increasing its tuition, the University of Virginia saw its percentage of students eligible for Pell grants drop to just 8%.
Garland does not concentrate on this question of equity, and instead, he insists that the only way to keep universities solvent is to allow for the free market to balance supply and demand, and therefore universities should not rely on state subsidies to balance their books, and they also should not allow states to regulate their tuition. Here we see the neoliberal playbook in its purest form: the government should be eliminated so the free market can function in its pure state.
Garland attaches this need to break the relation between the public university and the state to global trends that no one can prevent. According to this common fatalistic logic, states will continue to reduce their funding for universities because they have lost their tax base due to the movement of jobs overseas (xi). Furthermore, since most of the costs for universities are fixed (tenure, healthcare, and building maintenance), the only thing a university can do is to either constantly raise tuition or lower the educational quality by replacing tenure-track faculty with part-timers and expanding class sizes, while neglecting the need for repairs and upkeep.
Of course, most universities have selected both strategies because for the last thirty years, we have seen a constant increase in tuition combined with a downsizing of the faculty. In fact, one of the giant holes in Garland’s book is he does not see how universities have simply shifted their funding structures by making undergraduate students pay for the constant increase in administration and research budgets. In other words, as the quality of undergraduate education has been downsized, the cost has gone up because the price of tuition is unrelated to the quality of education.
While Garland’s book is full of holes and contradictions, it is worthy of a read for one reason: it appears to be the training manual for university presidents like Mark Yudof. Virtually every claim and strategy discussed in this work has been recycled and re-presented by the UC president.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Race to the Bottom: A Critical Response to the UCLA Humanities Task Force
For the past nine months, an ad hoc task force has been meeting in order to rethink the structure of the humanities division at UCLA. All people interested in the future of higher education should be concerned with this report that makes several questionable recommendations. While the authors claim that their main emphasis is not to slash the budgets of these programs, it is clear that their central focus is to reduce labor costs at the university: “Language instruction is labor-intensive and tends at UCLA to employ non-ladder instructors unprotected by tenure. Because of this, we expect there to be substantial pressure to ease the language requirement, which would not only blatantly contradict all three of the “chief campus priorities of excellence, diversity, and community engagement” (which our charge letter reasonably reminds us to “bear in mind”), but would also in our opinion be disastrous on multiple levels.” Reading this opening salvo, one would think that report would endorse protecting language instruction and non-tenure-track faculty (lecturers), but we soon learn that this ad hoc faculty committee (with no lecturer representation) attempts to imagine a world without lecturers.
As this report constantly points out, lecturers are the least expensive teachers, and they teach many--if not most--of the required classes in the humanities, but they are also the most vulnerable during a budget crisis, and so the campus must find a way to staff undergraduate courses without these teachers. The first recommendation is to strengthen the foreign language programs by moving up to half of the classes to summer and online: “Active use of the Summer Sessions would produce two immediate and direct benefits: (1) pressure would be lessened upon those language programs that are currently overburdened between September and June; (2) revenue could be generated during the summer to fund both lecturers and graduate students. We estimate that as much as 40-50% of language teaching could be moved to the summer, and even more if we consider the undeveloped potential for an affiliated Online Language Program, based upon the profitable, technically established model in place for the last five years at UCLA’s TFT. Enrollments and income will both grow. Non-UCLA students could be specifically targeted, not only from elsewhere within California, but also abroad.” What this report does not mention is that by moving half of the courses to summer, UCLA would be able to lay off all of its language instructors, and then hire these faculty members back without benefits and at much lower salaries. Since summer session is only partially covered by the lecturers contract, the summer teachers could be paid at a low rate and would lose all of their job protections.
Of course, the other major part of this initiative is the question of the effectiveness of online language instruction. In fact, much of this report is spent defending the idea that the turn to online learning will not undermine the reputation of the institution; rather, the task force claims that UCLA will be able to position itself as a leader of high quality digital learning: “UCLA’s great reputation would assure the popularity of our online courses, especially given the complete lack of competition today in the “high-end” realm of learner-centered, distance pedagogy.” As someone who has written an entire book on the subject of how online education undermines the value of research universities, I would argue that the lack of competition stems from the realization that most online programs end up to be very expensive and result in a low level of student retention. That is not to say that we should not use new media in our classes; rather, we cannot employ these new technologies to completely replace in-class instruction.
In one of the most dubious parts of this report, the writers claim that the turn to online writing instruction will actually save money and jobs: “Online learning offers the potential to achieve several concrete goals: improvement in students’ time-to-degree; a lessening of pressure in overcrowded classrooms; the generation of funds in order to save lecturers’ positions; and the emergence of UCLA as the leader in top-quality, i.e., not cut-price, distance education.” First of all, if you move courses to summer and online, you will not need any lecturers, except for the ones you hire on the cheap during the summer. Second of all, the reason why online programs costs so much is that they require a tremendous amount of equipment, staff, electricity, and administration; moreover, most studies of online education show that these programs hurt the ability of students to graduate on time because so many students drop out or do not complete their courses.
Perhaps the most noxious part of this plan is the idea to force students to pay extra to fulfill their language courses in the summer: “Because many students might prefer to avoid the added expense of summer study, a respectful hierarchy would need to be established among participants. If languages were indeed offered year-round, it would be only fair to give Majors and Pre-Majors in the relevant departments first choice during the school year. Language instruction that is traditionally oversubscribed, such as Chinese and Spanish, could require transfer or “external” students from other departments to satisfy their language requirements during the summer.” I believe this passage is positing that students who are not majoring in a specific language would have to take the course during the summer or some other program that requires payment. Instead of students being able to study their home language at UCLA, they would now have to pay extra for the privilege of language instruction.
As language instruction gets squeezed, the plan is to set up a new Humanities Institute and develop a new major in Digital Humanities. While these programs might seem like good ways of rethinking the humanities, these new initiatives would surely cost a large amount of money, and one has to question why UCLA is pursuing a policy of eliminating all lecturers due to budgetary concerns as it embarks on projects that require new administrators, faculty, and staff. Furthermore, the report reveals that the humanities have been kept afloat by their reliance on courses taught by lecturers, but now they are going to eliminate their own cash cow: “Humanities generating over $59 million in student fee revenue, while spending only $53.5 million (unlike the Physical Sciences, which come up several million dollars short in this category). Writing Programs alone generates $4.3 million dollars in fee revenue at a cost of only $2.4 million. These profits will increase as student fees increase; they would be even greater if we figured in a share of the over-enrollment subsidies due from the state. In pursuing our vital, non- profit mission of advancing knowledge and teaching, the Humanities is not only a bargain, but also a profit-generating entity. Massive cuts in the Humanities instructional budget are not only destructive to the core mission of the University; they are also financially unjustifiable.” According to this analysis, the Writing Programs generates a large profit for the humanities, and any cut to this program would be destructive to the core mission and financially unjustifiable; however, the report fails to mention that all of the faculty in the Writing Programs have been given one-year layoff notices. While we expect that some of these layoffs will be rescinded, the current plan is to replace many of the lecturers with graduate students and faculty from other programs.
In one of the only other mentions of writing instruction in the report, the authors actually suggest placing faculty from other departments who continue to have low workloads into writing classes: “Faculty whose courses are insufficiently enrolled could be assigned to appropriate courses in the Humanities Institute, The Language Center, or the Writing Programs (as is already the case in at least one department). Department chairs will be responsible for making such assignments, and for assuring that faculty teaching in the writing program are sufficiently trained through the program’s pedagogy course.” In this structure, teaching in the Writing Programs would be the ultimate threat to tenured professors. Here we see how the most popular and profitable program at UCLA is represented as the worst form of punishment for underutilized faculty.
Not only does this task force suggest moving language courses to the summer and online, but it lists over a hundred high-enrollment courses from all over the curriculum that could be shifted to the summer. If the university actually followed the advice of this report, we would see most of the required undergraduate courses placed online, and students would have to pay extra for the privilege of taking these classes of questionable quality. One of the justifications for this move is that the high-enrollment classes already suffer from a low level of quality: “most of our GE/Lower-Division students have some experience of classes that are so big, they’d be better off watching a video performance, a close-up broadcast that is paused and (re)considered at their own pace. The bigger classes often offer no contact with the professor, in any case. Hence the number of students in the back row(s) “taking notes” on their laptops, many of whom are actually polishing their Facebook profiles. (The same students, no doubt, also wish they were at home, watching a popular BruinCast of the same information. This is an online program, in fact, that is now so popular it has caused lecture attendance to decrease!).” In other words, large lecture classes already provide such a poor level of instruction and interaction that we might as well move the whole thing online. It is amazing that these thoughtful advocates of the humanities are actually recommending the destruction of higher education and effective undergraduate instruction.
As this report constantly points out, lecturers are the least expensive teachers, and they teach many--if not most--of the required classes in the humanities, but they are also the most vulnerable during a budget crisis, and so the campus must find a way to staff undergraduate courses without these teachers. The first recommendation is to strengthen the foreign language programs by moving up to half of the classes to summer and online: “Active use of the Summer Sessions would produce two immediate and direct benefits: (1) pressure would be lessened upon those language programs that are currently overburdened between September and June; (2) revenue could be generated during the summer to fund both lecturers and graduate students. We estimate that as much as 40-50% of language teaching could be moved to the summer, and even more if we consider the undeveloped potential for an affiliated Online Language Program, based upon the profitable, technically established model in place for the last five years at UCLA’s TFT. Enrollments and income will both grow. Non-UCLA students could be specifically targeted, not only from elsewhere within California, but also abroad.” What this report does not mention is that by moving half of the courses to summer, UCLA would be able to lay off all of its language instructors, and then hire these faculty members back without benefits and at much lower salaries. Since summer session is only partially covered by the lecturers contract, the summer teachers could be paid at a low rate and would lose all of their job protections.
Of course, the other major part of this initiative is the question of the effectiveness of online language instruction. In fact, much of this report is spent defending the idea that the turn to online learning will not undermine the reputation of the institution; rather, the task force claims that UCLA will be able to position itself as a leader of high quality digital learning: “UCLA’s great reputation would assure the popularity of our online courses, especially given the complete lack of competition today in the “high-end” realm of learner-centered, distance pedagogy.” As someone who has written an entire book on the subject of how online education undermines the value of research universities, I would argue that the lack of competition stems from the realization that most online programs end up to be very expensive and result in a low level of student retention. That is not to say that we should not use new media in our classes; rather, we cannot employ these new technologies to completely replace in-class instruction.
In one of the most dubious parts of this report, the writers claim that the turn to online writing instruction will actually save money and jobs: “Online learning offers the potential to achieve several concrete goals: improvement in students’ time-to-degree; a lessening of pressure in overcrowded classrooms; the generation of funds in order to save lecturers’ positions; and the emergence of UCLA as the leader in top-quality, i.e., not cut-price, distance education.” First of all, if you move courses to summer and online, you will not need any lecturers, except for the ones you hire on the cheap during the summer. Second of all, the reason why online programs costs so much is that they require a tremendous amount of equipment, staff, electricity, and administration; moreover, most studies of online education show that these programs hurt the ability of students to graduate on time because so many students drop out or do not complete their courses.
Perhaps the most noxious part of this plan is the idea to force students to pay extra to fulfill their language courses in the summer: “Because many students might prefer to avoid the added expense of summer study, a respectful hierarchy would need to be established among participants. If languages were indeed offered year-round, it would be only fair to give Majors and Pre-Majors in the relevant departments first choice during the school year. Language instruction that is traditionally oversubscribed, such as Chinese and Spanish, could require transfer or “external” students from other departments to satisfy their language requirements during the summer.” I believe this passage is positing that students who are not majoring in a specific language would have to take the course during the summer or some other program that requires payment. Instead of students being able to study their home language at UCLA, they would now have to pay extra for the privilege of language instruction.
As language instruction gets squeezed, the plan is to set up a new Humanities Institute and develop a new major in Digital Humanities. While these programs might seem like good ways of rethinking the humanities, these new initiatives would surely cost a large amount of money, and one has to question why UCLA is pursuing a policy of eliminating all lecturers due to budgetary concerns as it embarks on projects that require new administrators, faculty, and staff. Furthermore, the report reveals that the humanities have been kept afloat by their reliance on courses taught by lecturers, but now they are going to eliminate their own cash cow: “Humanities generating over $59 million in student fee revenue, while spending only $53.5 million (unlike the Physical Sciences, which come up several million dollars short in this category). Writing Programs alone generates $4.3 million dollars in fee revenue at a cost of only $2.4 million. These profits will increase as student fees increase; they would be even greater if we figured in a share of the over-enrollment subsidies due from the state. In pursuing our vital, non- profit mission of advancing knowledge and teaching, the Humanities is not only a bargain, but also a profit-generating entity. Massive cuts in the Humanities instructional budget are not only destructive to the core mission of the University; they are also financially unjustifiable.” According to this analysis, the Writing Programs generates a large profit for the humanities, and any cut to this program would be destructive to the core mission and financially unjustifiable; however, the report fails to mention that all of the faculty in the Writing Programs have been given one-year layoff notices. While we expect that some of these layoffs will be rescinded, the current plan is to replace many of the lecturers with graduate students and faculty from other programs.
In one of the only other mentions of writing instruction in the report, the authors actually suggest placing faculty from other departments who continue to have low workloads into writing classes: “Faculty whose courses are insufficiently enrolled could be assigned to appropriate courses in the Humanities Institute, The Language Center, or the Writing Programs (as is already the case in at least one department). Department chairs will be responsible for making such assignments, and for assuring that faculty teaching in the writing program are sufficiently trained through the program’s pedagogy course.” In this structure, teaching in the Writing Programs would be the ultimate threat to tenured professors. Here we see how the most popular and profitable program at UCLA is represented as the worst form of punishment for underutilized faculty.
Not only does this task force suggest moving language courses to the summer and online, but it lists over a hundred high-enrollment courses from all over the curriculum that could be shifted to the summer. If the university actually followed the advice of this report, we would see most of the required undergraduate courses placed online, and students would have to pay extra for the privilege of taking these classes of questionable quality. One of the justifications for this move is that the high-enrollment classes already suffer from a low level of quality: “most of our GE/Lower-Division students have some experience of classes that are so big, they’d be better off watching a video performance, a close-up broadcast that is paused and (re)considered at their own pace. The bigger classes often offer no contact with the professor, in any case. Hence the number of students in the back row(s) “taking notes” on their laptops, many of whom are actually polishing their Facebook profiles. (The same students, no doubt, also wish they were at home, watching a popular BruinCast of the same information. This is an online program, in fact, that is now so popular it has caused lecture attendance to decrease!).” In other words, large lecture classes already provide such a poor level of instruction and interaction that we might as well move the whole thing online. It is amazing that these thoughtful advocates of the humanities are actually recommending the destruction of higher education and effective undergraduate instruction.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
UCI Medical Center Neglects Patients, Sells Body Parts, and Gets Bonuses
The UC Regents have voted to spend over $3 million on bonuses to medical center administrators during a time when they are raising student fees, reducing salaries (furloughs), laying off workers and lecturers, and pleading poverty. The justification for these raises is that the university needs to pay the market price for these extraordinary individuals. Of course, this means that all of the other workers are not worthy of market-based salaries. Moreover, the regents have argued that since only a small part of the medical centers’ budgets are funded by the state, the medical executives do not have to share in their current austerity measures. This claim neglects the fact that state funds have built the medical centers and these institutions gain access to grants and prestige because they are associated to the University of California.
On the same day that the regents voted on these special executive pay increases, the Los Angeles Times reported that the UCI medical center was once again facing an investigation by the federal government for the medical center’s lack of oversight. Here are some of the problems cited by the federal investigation:
* An 82-year-old man was mistakenly given a narcotic patch by a medical resident, without approval of doctors or pharmacists. The patch led to an overdose that required emergency intervention and may have contributed to his death a week later.
* A patient in the neuropsychiatric unit fell twice in three days and despite yelling "Help me, doctor, help me," suffered a head injury and had to be taken to intensive care.
* An on-call resident did not respond to repeated emergency pages from nurses in the neurological intensive care unit, where a patient with an irregular heartbeat languished for more than an hour.
• Pharmacists failed to monitor and store drugs correctly, allowing nurses to carry narcotics in their pockets and inject patients without proper oversight.
Of course, everybody makes mistakes, but when there is a long history of repeated mistakes, the administration should be held accountable.
As the LA Times story reminds us, “In 2005, the hospital closed its liver transplant program after The Times reported 32 people died awaiting livers in 2004 and 2005, even as doctors turned down organs later successfully transplanted elsewhere. In 1999 and 2000, the university's Willed Body Program drew criticism after its director performed unauthorized autopsies and sold body parts. In 1995, a team of fertility doctors at the school's Center for Reproductive Health was accused of stealing patients' eggs and embryos and implanting them in other patients without permission.”
One has to wonder if an institution with such a bad track record should be allowed to give its executives huge bonuses.
On the same day that the regents voted on these special executive pay increases, the Los Angeles Times reported that the UCI medical center was once again facing an investigation by the federal government for the medical center’s lack of oversight. Here are some of the problems cited by the federal investigation:
* An 82-year-old man was mistakenly given a narcotic patch by a medical resident, without approval of doctors or pharmacists. The patch led to an overdose that required emergency intervention and may have contributed to his death a week later.
* A patient in the neuropsychiatric unit fell twice in three days and despite yelling "Help me, doctor, help me," suffered a head injury and had to be taken to intensive care.
* An on-call resident did not respond to repeated emergency pages from nurses in the neurological intensive care unit, where a patient with an irregular heartbeat languished for more than an hour.
• Pharmacists failed to monitor and store drugs correctly, allowing nurses to carry narcotics in their pockets and inject patients without proper oversight.
Of course, everybody makes mistakes, but when there is a long history of repeated mistakes, the administration should be held accountable.
As the LA Times story reminds us, “In 2005, the hospital closed its liver transplant program after The Times reported 32 people died awaiting livers in 2004 and 2005, even as doctors turned down organs later successfully transplanted elsewhere. In 1999 and 2000, the university's Willed Body Program drew criticism after its director performed unauthorized autopsies and sold body parts. In 1995, a team of fertility doctors at the school's Center for Reproductive Health was accused of stealing patients' eggs and embryos and implanting them in other patients without permission.”
One has to wonder if an institution with such a bad track record should be allowed to give its executives huge bonuses.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
On Cary Nelson’s No University is an Island
Cary Nelson’s new book, No University is an Island, brings together many of the different issues currently facing the University of California and other higher education institutions. While his main theme is academic freedom, he is able to locate this central educational value at the intersection of several interlocking forces: privatization, casualization, corporatization, and globalization. Nelson, the current president of AAUP, asks the essential question of what happens to the ability of faculty to teach, research, and communicate when profit has replaced the public good, and when public institutions are being privatized while job security is being casualized. By invoking the general concept of neoliberalism, Nelson is able to show how even the most secure and privileged faculty are threatened by the growing power of business-oriented administrators who have wrestled most aspects of shared governance away from professors. From his perspective, without tenure, there can be no academic freedom, and without academic freedom, there can be no shared governance.
I was surprised to note that virtually all of the examples of corporatization and privatization that Nelson documents from around the world have recently occurred in the UC system. This includes administrators pushing expensive, untested online programs, faculty having their emails read, Right-wing groups trying to censor teachers, the creation of ad hoc committees to circumvent normal shared governance, the push to defund the humanities, the creation of false budget emergencies to enact hidden agendas, and the persecution of university whistleblowers to name just a few. Not only have I discussed all of these issues in my blog, but my program has been victimized by all of these destructive processes.
Not only did I discover this year that some administrators were receiving all of my program’s emails, but our campus, UCLA, recently had to fight an outside Right-wing group that was paying students to record teachers saying anti-conservative and “anti-American” things. If this was not bad enough, UCLA recently decided to set up their own internal web site so that students and other community members could report acts of bias. This type of digital surveillance system surely has a chilling effect on academic freedom.
Of course, one of the greatest threats to academic freedom that Nelson discusses is the growing use of contingent faculty who often have no academic freedom protections. While the union contract regulating the lecturers in the UC system gives the non-tenured faculty the same academic freedom rights as the tenured faculty, lecturers often have to self-censor themselves because many of them rely on getting high student evaluations to keep their jobs, and most of these contingent faculty members can be fired without just cause. We have found that even the lecturers with job security and due process can be eliminated if the university declares a fiscal emergency.
The greatest strength of Nelson’s book is that it constantly returns to the idea that only the faculty working collectively can defend the university as a public good. By chiding some of his colleagues for focusing too much on their own careers, he makes a strong plea for all of us to take back our institutions. Furthermore, by documenting cases of effective faculty resistance, Nelson provides a glimmer of hope in these dark times.
I was surprised to note that virtually all of the examples of corporatization and privatization that Nelson documents from around the world have recently occurred in the UC system. This includes administrators pushing expensive, untested online programs, faculty having their emails read, Right-wing groups trying to censor teachers, the creation of ad hoc committees to circumvent normal shared governance, the push to defund the humanities, the creation of false budget emergencies to enact hidden agendas, and the persecution of university whistleblowers to name just a few. Not only have I discussed all of these issues in my blog, but my program has been victimized by all of these destructive processes.
Not only did I discover this year that some administrators were receiving all of my program’s emails, but our campus, UCLA, recently had to fight an outside Right-wing group that was paying students to record teachers saying anti-conservative and “anti-American” things. If this was not bad enough, UCLA recently decided to set up their own internal web site so that students and other community members could report acts of bias. This type of digital surveillance system surely has a chilling effect on academic freedom.
Of course, one of the greatest threats to academic freedom that Nelson discusses is the growing use of contingent faculty who often have no academic freedom protections. While the union contract regulating the lecturers in the UC system gives the non-tenured faculty the same academic freedom rights as the tenured faculty, lecturers often have to self-censor themselves because many of them rely on getting high student evaluations to keep their jobs, and most of these contingent faculty members can be fired without just cause. We have found that even the lecturers with job security and due process can be eliminated if the university declares a fiscal emergency.
The greatest strength of Nelson’s book is that it constantly returns to the idea that only the faculty working collectively can defend the university as a public good. By chiding some of his colleagues for focusing too much on their own careers, he makes a strong plea for all of us to take back our institutions. Furthermore, by documenting cases of effective faculty resistance, Nelson provides a glimmer of hope in these dark times.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Connecting the Dots: UC Regents Meeting 2010
One of my favorite assignments for students is that I give them several headlines from the day's news and ask them to connect the different stories together. The idea behind this exercise is that people need to overcome the fragmented nature of our information society. So, let us take a look at the top five headlines from the January 21st UC Regents meeting: 1) UC approves bonuses for hospital execs; 2) Waiting lists to be established at most UC campuses, regents say; 3) UC regents approve Cal stadium retrofit; 4) Regents to back UC students protest at Capitol ; 5) UC leaders wary of governor's budget promises
At first these stories appear to go in different directions, but there is an underlying logic that connects the dots: The UC system is continuing its recent push to increase the compensation of its highest earners and embark on expensive construction projects as it limits undergraduate enrollment and attacks the state for not supporting higher education. While the UC administration says that it has to raise student fees and limit access because state funding is down, it also argues that it must pay top administrators higher salaries in order to keep them from going elsewhere.
The new twist to this old tune is that the regents and President Yudof are trying to co-opt the recent protests by students, faculty, and unions. We now have to imagine the regents and President Yudof locking arms with students marching through the streets of Sacramento demanding that legislators fully fund the UC system. In response to this fake claim of solidarity, several unions have released the following statement:
“To Defend Education, Reverse the Hikes and Cuts:
Open Letter to UC Regents and the People of California
The UC Regents claim to be on the side of students, staff, and faculty in defending public education, but their actions speak otherwise.
On January 20, UC President Mark Yudof and other UC Regents announced to the press that they support the March 4 Strike and Day of Action to Defend Public Education. Yet at that very meeting they awarded $3.1 million more in executive bonuses.
This is a cynical publicity stunt, and we do not buy it.
If the UC Regents were serious about supporting the students, staff, and faculty of the UC system, they would immediately reverse the 32% fee hike and roll back the catastrophic layoffs and cuts they have imposed. The future of public education in California for all working people and communities of color is at stake.
The UC Regents claim that the University of California is broke and therefore they argue that "we must work together to pressure Sacramento." But if the UC is broke, why are the Regents giving out millions in executive bonuses? If the UC is broke, why did the Regents recently loan the State of California nearly $200 million dollars? And if the UC Regents are "on our side," why have UC police consistently been sent in to repress peaceful protests?
Independent analyses of the UC budget testify to a simple and disturbing fact: the fee hikes and layoffs in the UC system are a result of a priorities crisis, not a "budget crisis." Indeed, the UC made record profits last year. The conclusion: UC Regents can and must use their millions of dollars in reserve funds to reverse the fee hikes, cuts, and layoffs.
Furthermore, we do not accept that the UC system be funded at the expense of pre-K, K-12, Community Colleges, the CSUs and adult education, as well as other public services. All levels of education must be fully funded and quality education must be equally accessible to all Californians and immigrants.
On March 4, 2010, tens of thousands of students, teachers, and workers and their organizations in all sectors of public education and across the public sector will organize mass strikes and protests against the priorities crisis of both Sacramento and the UC, CSU, CC, and K-12 administrators.
Until the UC Regents and Sacramento reverse the fee hikes, cuts, and layoffs, we pledge to continue to deepen this growing movement. We refuse to let this struggle be co-opted.”
At first these stories appear to go in different directions, but there is an underlying logic that connects the dots: The UC system is continuing its recent push to increase the compensation of its highest earners and embark on expensive construction projects as it limits undergraduate enrollment and attacks the state for not supporting higher education. While the UC administration says that it has to raise student fees and limit access because state funding is down, it also argues that it must pay top administrators higher salaries in order to keep them from going elsewhere.
The new twist to this old tune is that the regents and President Yudof are trying to co-opt the recent protests by students, faculty, and unions. We now have to imagine the regents and President Yudof locking arms with students marching through the streets of Sacramento demanding that legislators fully fund the UC system. In response to this fake claim of solidarity, several unions have released the following statement:
“To Defend Education, Reverse the Hikes and Cuts:
Open Letter to UC Regents and the People of California
The UC Regents claim to be on the side of students, staff, and faculty in defending public education, but their actions speak otherwise.
On January 20, UC President Mark Yudof and other UC Regents announced to the press that they support the March 4 Strike and Day of Action to Defend Public Education. Yet at that very meeting they awarded $3.1 million more in executive bonuses.
This is a cynical publicity stunt, and we do not buy it.
If the UC Regents were serious about supporting the students, staff, and faculty of the UC system, they would immediately reverse the 32% fee hike and roll back the catastrophic layoffs and cuts they have imposed. The future of public education in California for all working people and communities of color is at stake.
The UC Regents claim that the University of California is broke and therefore they argue that "we must work together to pressure Sacramento." But if the UC is broke, why are the Regents giving out millions in executive bonuses? If the UC is broke, why did the Regents recently loan the State of California nearly $200 million dollars? And if the UC Regents are "on our side," why have UC police consistently been sent in to repress peaceful protests?
Independent analyses of the UC budget testify to a simple and disturbing fact: the fee hikes and layoffs in the UC system are a result of a priorities crisis, not a "budget crisis." Indeed, the UC made record profits last year. The conclusion: UC Regents can and must use their millions of dollars in reserve funds to reverse the fee hikes, cuts, and layoffs.
Furthermore, we do not accept that the UC system be funded at the expense of pre-K, K-12, Community Colleges, the CSUs and adult education, as well as other public services. All levels of education must be fully funded and quality education must be equally accessible to all Californians and immigrants.
On March 4, 2010, tens of thousands of students, teachers, and workers and their organizations in all sectors of public education and across the public sector will organize mass strikes and protests against the priorities crisis of both Sacramento and the UC, CSU, CC, and K-12 administrators.
Until the UC Regents and Sacramento reverse the fee hikes, cuts, and layoffs, we pledge to continue to deepen this growing movement. We refuse to let this struggle be co-opted.”
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
As Protesting Students were Beaten, Regents Approved More Executive Increases
During the last UC Regents meeting in November at UCLA, while students were being tasered, pepper sprayed, and beaten for protesting a 32% fee increase, the regents were meeting privately doing what they do best, which is to grant special compensation packages for star administrators. While people often think the money for these escalating salaries and perks just comes out of thin air, I have been arguing that the money funding these increases is taken from reduced wages for most employees and increased fees for students. Of course, due to the fact administrators are often paid out of a combination of endowment funds, grant overhead, state funds, service profits, and student fees, it is virtually impossible to trace how administrative salaries are being funded, and this is one reason why we have called for a state audit of UC’s finances.
Reading the latest list of the approved exceptions to the UC’s own compensation policies, one gets a feeling that the regents are going out of their way to rationalize these high compensation packages during a time of a “fiscal emergency.” The discussion of new raises starts out by calling attention to the claim that the highest paid administrators are actually underpaid, “While the University is often criticized in the media for its compensation actions, individuals familiar with the relevant fields are concerned that the University does not properly compensate some of its highly qualified employees. This matter needs to be included in the University’s advocacy with representatives in the Legislature. Regent Blum recalled that the University’s compensation procedures were extremely inadequate three to four years earlier; there has been significant progress since that time. He expressed concern, however, about the salary level of UC chancellors and referred to a ranking of Association of American Universities institutions by the salary level of campus leaders; UC campuses were low in that ranking. This should be a matter of concern for the University.” As I have pointed out before, the UC often fudges its compensation studies by only including base pay in its comparisons, and as we shall see, a large part of the total compensation for administrators comes from non-base pay. Moreover, I am pretty sure that legislators do not want to increase the funding for the UC so it can use it for raises to top executives. In fact, Alberto Torrico, the Assembly Majority Leader, has said explicitly that he wants to make sure that any new funds going to the UC system are not just used to increase the cost of administration.
Here is a typical example of the many different perks that were approved during the regents meeting: “Appointment of Mona Sonnenshein as Acting Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive Officer, UC San Diego Medical Center, effective August 22, 2009 and continuing until the effective date of the appointment of the new CEO. Continuation of current base salary of $514,700 and eligibility to participate in the Clinical Enterprise Management Recognition Program (CEMRP) with a maximum potential incentive of up to 25 percent of base salary. Additional items of compensation include: Per policy, standard pension and health and welfare benefits and standard senior management benefits (including senior management life insurance, executive business travel insurance, and executive salary continuation for disability); Per policy, a five percent monthly contribution to the Senior Management Supplemental Benefit Program; Mortgage Origination Program loan, previously approved by the Regents.” It is not enough for this administrator to get a salary of over $500,000, but she also is able to increase her salary by an additional 25%, and she receives costly senior management benefits, a supplemental benefits contribution, and a free mortgage. None of these extra perks show up in the official listing of her compensation, so we have no way of knowing her actual total compensation.
In their justification for several large compensation increases for medical administrators, the regents argue that these employees are not funded out of state funds, so they should be able to be granted these huge packages. However, Senator Grassley’s investigation into the UC’s medical centers is trying to determine how these positions are funded since they seem to be funded by multiple sources. Moreover, it is still unclear why the medical employees are treated as a special class; for instance, most of the medical faculty, who are the highest paid faculty in the UC system, did not have to participate in the furlough plan. The regents appear to believe that medical centers are their own special universe, and even though the medical facilities were built through state funding, and the medical centers continue to use state-funded faculty and students, this group of employees does not have to share in the fiscal emergency. Here is just a small list of some of the compensation increases approved during the last regents meeting:
1. Kenneth M. Jones as Chief Operating Officer
a. Promotion to Chief Operating Officer classified at SLCG Grade 115 (Minimum $416,300, Midpoint $541,200, Maximum $666,100).
b. Per policy, a base salary increase of $77,400 (16.5 percent) to increase his current base salary of $470,200 to an annual salary of $547,600.
2. Sheila Antrum as Chief Nursing and Patient Care Services Officer
a. Promotion and interim re-slotting to SLCG Grade 110 (Minimum $239,700, Midpoint $307,200, Maximum $374,500), with continued title of Chief Nursing and Patient Care Services Officer.
b. As an exception to policy, continued administrative stipend of $37,500 (15percent) to increase her current base salary of $250,000 to an annual salary of $287,500. Per policy, continued eligibility to participate in the Clinical Enterprise Management Recognition Program (CEMRP) at the Tier II level with a target of 15 percent and a maximum potential incentive of up to 25 percent of base salary.
3. Susan Moore as Acting Chief Financial Officer
a. As an exception to policy, extension of appointment as Acting Chief Financial Officer. This represents an exception to policy which allows for acting Senior Management Group appointments to be up to 12 months in length.
b. As an exception to policy, continued administrative stipend of $58,625 (25percent) to increase her current base salary of $234,500 to an annual salary of $293,125. Continued classification at SLCG Grade 107 (Minimum $172,300, Midpoint $218,700, Maximum $265,000) as well as Management and Senior Professional (MSP) Grade 7. Slotting for Acting Chief Financial Officer is SLCG Grade 114 (Minimum $372,900, Midpoint $483,400, Maximum $593,800).
c. The stipend amount will be increased as the base salary is increased, so the stipend will equal 25 percent of the base salary, at a 100-percent-time appointment.
d. Per policy, continued eligibility to participate in the Clinical Enterprise Management Recognition Program (CEMRP) at the increased Tier II level with a target of 15 percent and a maximum potential incentive of up to 25 percent of base salary.
We must remember that these raises and exceptions were given during a time of a fiscal crisis, and while the university appears to have no money to hire new faculty or to fund required courses and student support services, it always has enough money for a new administrative increases.
At one point in their discussion of raises, the regents do mention that they have frozen increases for executive salaries, but they follow this recognition of their own laws, with another call to suspend the rules: “At the January 2009 special meeting, the Regents approved the Proposal to Freeze Senior Management Group Salaries and Suspend Bonus and Certain Other Variable Pay Plans (Item C1), an action to freeze salary for members of the Senior Management Group (SMG) for fiscal year 2008-09 and fiscal year 2009- 10 and to impose certain additional restrictions on participation in bonus, incentive and variable pay programs for that same time period as well as fiscal year 2007-08. The salary freeze included a provision allowing for SMG members who hold an academic appointment in addition to their staff role, and who receive an academic merit increase resulting in the faculty salary exceeding the staff salary, to receive an adjustment to the staff salary so that the staff salary matches the faculty salary. Approval is requested for this type of salary adjustment for Vijay Dhir, Dean – Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, effective November 1, 2009. Mr. Dhir’s administrative salary has fallen behind his underlying adjusted faculty appointment salary ($300,300, inclusive of 2.5 summer ninths) thus disadvantaging him in serving as Dean. In addition, his salary reflects a significant market lag and has fallen behind more recent hires of deans of engineering at other UC campuses whose salaries more appropriately reflect market rates. The proposed action will bring Mr. Dhir’s administrative salary equal to his adjusted faculty salary and, as a result, better align him with his cohorts both within UC and in the marketplace.”
Of course, we would all liked to be paid our fair market value, but as I have shown before, only some UC employees are considered to be market worthy.
Reading the latest list of the approved exceptions to the UC’s own compensation policies, one gets a feeling that the regents are going out of their way to rationalize these high compensation packages during a time of a “fiscal emergency.” The discussion of new raises starts out by calling attention to the claim that the highest paid administrators are actually underpaid, “While the University is often criticized in the media for its compensation actions, individuals familiar with the relevant fields are concerned that the University does not properly compensate some of its highly qualified employees. This matter needs to be included in the University’s advocacy with representatives in the Legislature. Regent Blum recalled that the University’s compensation procedures were extremely inadequate three to four years earlier; there has been significant progress since that time. He expressed concern, however, about the salary level of UC chancellors and referred to a ranking of Association of American Universities institutions by the salary level of campus leaders; UC campuses were low in that ranking. This should be a matter of concern for the University.” As I have pointed out before, the UC often fudges its compensation studies by only including base pay in its comparisons, and as we shall see, a large part of the total compensation for administrators comes from non-base pay. Moreover, I am pretty sure that legislators do not want to increase the funding for the UC so it can use it for raises to top executives. In fact, Alberto Torrico, the Assembly Majority Leader, has said explicitly that he wants to make sure that any new funds going to the UC system are not just used to increase the cost of administration.
Here is a typical example of the many different perks that were approved during the regents meeting: “Appointment of Mona Sonnenshein as Acting Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive Officer, UC San Diego Medical Center, effective August 22, 2009 and continuing until the effective date of the appointment of the new CEO. Continuation of current base salary of $514,700 and eligibility to participate in the Clinical Enterprise Management Recognition Program (CEMRP) with a maximum potential incentive of up to 25 percent of base salary. Additional items of compensation include: Per policy, standard pension and health and welfare benefits and standard senior management benefits (including senior management life insurance, executive business travel insurance, and executive salary continuation for disability); Per policy, a five percent monthly contribution to the Senior Management Supplemental Benefit Program; Mortgage Origination Program loan, previously approved by the Regents.” It is not enough for this administrator to get a salary of over $500,000, but she also is able to increase her salary by an additional 25%, and she receives costly senior management benefits, a supplemental benefits contribution, and a free mortgage. None of these extra perks show up in the official listing of her compensation, so we have no way of knowing her actual total compensation.
In their justification for several large compensation increases for medical administrators, the regents argue that these employees are not funded out of state funds, so they should be able to be granted these huge packages. However, Senator Grassley’s investigation into the UC’s medical centers is trying to determine how these positions are funded since they seem to be funded by multiple sources. Moreover, it is still unclear why the medical employees are treated as a special class; for instance, most of the medical faculty, who are the highest paid faculty in the UC system, did not have to participate in the furlough plan. The regents appear to believe that medical centers are their own special universe, and even though the medical facilities were built through state funding, and the medical centers continue to use state-funded faculty and students, this group of employees does not have to share in the fiscal emergency. Here is just a small list of some of the compensation increases approved during the last regents meeting:
1. Kenneth M. Jones as Chief Operating Officer
a. Promotion to Chief Operating Officer classified at SLCG Grade 115 (Minimum $416,300, Midpoint $541,200, Maximum $666,100).
b. Per policy, a base salary increase of $77,400 (16.5 percent) to increase his current base salary of $470,200 to an annual salary of $547,600.
2. Sheila Antrum as Chief Nursing and Patient Care Services Officer
a. Promotion and interim re-slotting to SLCG Grade 110 (Minimum $239,700, Midpoint $307,200, Maximum $374,500), with continued title of Chief Nursing and Patient Care Services Officer.
b. As an exception to policy, continued administrative stipend of $37,500 (15percent) to increase her current base salary of $250,000 to an annual salary of $287,500. Per policy, continued eligibility to participate in the Clinical Enterprise Management Recognition Program (CEMRP) at the Tier II level with a target of 15 percent and a maximum potential incentive of up to 25 percent of base salary.
3. Susan Moore as Acting Chief Financial Officer
a. As an exception to policy, extension of appointment as Acting Chief Financial Officer. This represents an exception to policy which allows for acting Senior Management Group appointments to be up to 12 months in length.
b. As an exception to policy, continued administrative stipend of $58,625 (25percent) to increase her current base salary of $234,500 to an annual salary of $293,125. Continued classification at SLCG Grade 107 (Minimum $172,300, Midpoint $218,700, Maximum $265,000) as well as Management and Senior Professional (MSP) Grade 7. Slotting for Acting Chief Financial Officer is SLCG Grade 114 (Minimum $372,900, Midpoint $483,400, Maximum $593,800).
c. The stipend amount will be increased as the base salary is increased, so the stipend will equal 25 percent of the base salary, at a 100-percent-time appointment.
d. Per policy, continued eligibility to participate in the Clinical Enterprise Management Recognition Program (CEMRP) at the increased Tier II level with a target of 15 percent and a maximum potential incentive of up to 25 percent of base salary.
We must remember that these raises and exceptions were given during a time of a fiscal crisis, and while the university appears to have no money to hire new faculty or to fund required courses and student support services, it always has enough money for a new administrative increases.
At one point in their discussion of raises, the regents do mention that they have frozen increases for executive salaries, but they follow this recognition of their own laws, with another call to suspend the rules: “At the January 2009 special meeting, the Regents approved the Proposal to Freeze Senior Management Group Salaries and Suspend Bonus and Certain Other Variable Pay Plans (Item C1), an action to freeze salary for members of the Senior Management Group (SMG) for fiscal year 2008-09 and fiscal year 2009- 10 and to impose certain additional restrictions on participation in bonus, incentive and variable pay programs for that same time period as well as fiscal year 2007-08. The salary freeze included a provision allowing for SMG members who hold an academic appointment in addition to their staff role, and who receive an academic merit increase resulting in the faculty salary exceeding the staff salary, to receive an adjustment to the staff salary so that the staff salary matches the faculty salary. Approval is requested for this type of salary adjustment for Vijay Dhir, Dean – Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, effective November 1, 2009. Mr. Dhir’s administrative salary has fallen behind his underlying adjusted faculty appointment salary ($300,300, inclusive of 2.5 summer ninths) thus disadvantaging him in serving as Dean. In addition, his salary reflects a significant market lag and has fallen behind more recent hires of deans of engineering at other UC campuses whose salaries more appropriately reflect market rates. The proposed action will bring Mr. Dhir’s administrative salary equal to his adjusted faculty salary and, as a result, better align him with his cohorts both within UC and in the marketplace.”
Of course, we would all liked to be paid our fair market value, but as I have shown before, only some UC employees are considered to be market worthy.
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