Who are the High Earners in the UC System

Like many people, I was wondering about who exactly are the people making more than $200,000 a year in the UC system. Using Jeffrey Bergamini’s great salary data (http://ucpay.globl.org), I analyzed the different categories of employees in the over 200K club. I also looked at how these groups increased over the two-year period from 2006 to 2008. Here is what I found (with Jeffrey’s help):

First of all, I broke the employees making over $200,000 into six basic groups: administrators, medical faculty, athletic coaches, business school professors, academic professors (excluding business and law professors), and law professors. These six categories accounted for over 95% of the revenue of the over $200,000 club, which had a total gross pay of over 1 billion dollars in 2008. The top group was the medical faculty, which had 2,296 people making a total of $680 million in 2008. This same group in 2006 had 1,748 employees with total earnings over $502 million. In other words, over a period of two years, the UC added 550 new people from the medical field into the over $200,000 club for an additional cost of $178 million (which is about the total savings for the entire furlough plan).

The second biggest group was the administrators. In 2008, there were 397 administrators in the over 200k club making a total of $109 million, and in 2006, the same group had 214 members for a collective gross pay of $58.8 million. This group and its collective salaries, then, almost doubled in just two years. If you want to know where the UC money has been going, this is a great place to start.

The third biggest group is the academic professors outside of law, medicine, and business. In 2008, there were 415 academic professors making over $2000,000 for a collective gross pay of $96.6 million. In 2006, this same group had 215 employees at $49 million. In other words, the number of academic professor’s outside of the professional schools making over $200,000 basically doubled in a two-year period. During this time, the faculty salaries in the UC system continued to fall beneath the national average, and so what we are seeing in the UC system is an incredible widening of faculty salary inequality: the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.

In the case of the business school faculty, in 2008, there were 372 faculty making more than $200,000 for a collective gross pay of $93 million, while in 2006, there were 193 in this group with a collective gross pay of $46 million. Once again the pay of this group doubled in two years: they do not call themselves business faculty for nothing.

In the case of law professors, we find that in 2008, there were 85 making over $200,000 for a collective pay of $21 million, and in 2006, this same group consisted of 57 employees making a collective $13 million. For some reason, this group did not double its earnings, but it still showed a healthy increase.

The final group is the athletic coaches, which in 2008, there were 24 coaches making over $2000,000 for a collective payout of $12.8 million. In 2006, this same group had only 11 members with collective earning over $5 million. So athletic coaches in this category more than doubled their earnings in two years.

What all of these statistics tell us that that UC does not have a budget problem; it has an out-of-control compensation problem. Moreover, it is the people at the top, just 1.5% of the employees (out of a total of 240,000 workers) who make 11% of the total compensation, and this group increased its wealth by close to 40% in just two years. Did you get a 40% raise in the last two years?
Bob Samuels, UC-AFT