On the heels of audits by PricewaterhouseCooper’s and California’s state auditor, which found holes aplenty in the University of California’s compensation practices, several state senators have called for the ouster of the beleaguered UC president. And they might have the right idea.
Granted, Dynes is not the only administrator responsible for the university’s burgeoning fiasco. True, his office granted substantial numbers of exceptions to UC pay policies in the last fiscal year. True, he himself received $23,000 in compensation related to his wife’s residence at UCSD, which makes him a tempting target.
But the UC Office of the President has been regularly issuing exceptions to university pay rules for nearly 10 years, while Dynes has been in office only since 2003. And $23,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the substantial benefits paid to other UC executives.
Furthermore, the audit done by the Bureau of State Audits — the state’s independent, nonpartisan watchdog — suggests that the greatest problems within the university’s pay practices are systematic — such as the outright failure to report compensation and the vague or misleading identification of packages that are reported — the blame for which can hardly be pinned on a single person.
But if anyone had the capability to identify and remedy these chronic problems, it was the UC president, who has been delegated much of the power of the UC regents to make pay decisions. And Dynes took little action on the university’s pay practices until the issue hit the newsstands in the San Francisco Chronicle. If the press had not been pressuring the university with its reports of the pay fiasco, Dynes’ apparent commitment to accountability and enforcement might never have seen the light of day.
This failure to act has left the president vulnerable to attacks from politicians and the public alike. “I think that Mr. Dynes is a good man,” said Sen. Abel Maldonaldo (R-Santa Maria) at a May 3 press conference. “I think Mr. Dynes is a good academic. I don’t think he is a good manager and he’s definitely not suited to run a $20 billion university system.”
A spokesman for Sen. Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) came to Dynes’ defense, saying that the senator “feels we really need to focus time, energy and efforts on the many issues facing the UC system, rather than the individual personalities involved” — which is all very well, considering Nuñez’s own position as a UC regent. However, the “issues” are not the policies themselves, but the people who administer and enforce them.
“Those of us who lead the University [of California] hold the university in trust for the people of California,” Dynes noted accurately in a Feb. 8 hearing with California’s Senate Education Committee. “We must earn their confidence by being clear about our policies, making sound decisions consistent with those policies, and being open in communicating the actions we’ve taken under our policies.”
Dynes is right on the money. But can we have confidence in UC leaders when self-analysis comes only when testy reporters are knocking on the door?
Dynes has accepted responsibility for the fact that the university “has not always met its obligations to public accountability in matters of compensation and compensation disclosure,” as he said in a hearing before the state senate, and he has apologized for these shortcomings. He clearly recognizes the widening breach of trust between the UC system and the California public, and that policies are meaningless without enforcement. But his assessment comes only under the coercion of public pressure — too late to save his credibility.
It’s unfortunate that Dynes should have to take a bullet for the system he inherited from the officials that preceded him. But charged with the administration of the university in the public trust, he should have seen the bullet coming.
Unless Dynes and the regents can pull a magic rabbit out of their hats at the regents’ meeting on May 17, the search for a new UC president should begin.
