The University of California remains outstanding. By some rankings, three of its schools are among the top 20 universities in the world. But for how long?
The budget has been cut by 20%. The Board of Regents votes today on UC President Mark Yudof's plan to deal with the shortfall.
FOR THE RECORD
California budget: A July 16 Op-Ed article about the University of California stated that its budget would be cut by 20%. It is a 20% cut in the state revenue portion of the UC budget.
Yudof's original proposal included salary cuts across the board of 8% or furloughs leading to an equivalent reduction. This at a time when UC salaries are already 10% or more below those at peer institutions. The current proposal is more nuanced, with cuts ranging from 4% for low earners to 10% for high earners.
The basic choice, though, is to cut employee salaries rather than lay off employees.
Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has thanked his faculty and staff for agreeing to this shared sacrifice. He says the alternative would have been to immediately eliminate hundreds of staff positions, which would have made some units dysfunctional.
A colleague at dinner the other night quipped that some units are already dysfunctional.
We don't doubt the chancellor's arithmetic, but we wonder whether Birgeneau and Yudof are ducking even more difficult, but more effective, options.
Across-the-board salary cuts are the simplest way to balance the budget, but they are rarely the best. In the corporate world, smart organizations more often choose layoffs than salary cuts. And with good reason.
A crisis is a time to rethink what we do, how we do it and who does it.
Consider what the proposed salary cuts would mean. With employees paid up to 20% below what peer institutions pay, the best will leave. Yes, even in this recession, the best people will leave for other jobs or retire or switch professions. And those who remain will suffer from low morale.
Growth has led to bloat at UC. The bloat and bureaucracy stifle creativity and productivity. The bloat is in unproductive workers and unproductive jobs. Many jobs have little to do with our core missions of teaching and research. Within jobs, there is task bloat -- mission creep creates too many assignments of little import.
These problems are endemic to most large organizations, but they are particular problems for one like UC, where it is almost impossible to fire an unproductive worker, whether staff or tenured professor, and always easier to hire a new one.
